Cry Wolf

Cry Wolf [047-011-4.8]

By: Wilbur Smith

Category: fiction action adventure

Synopsis:

"Run," he shouted. "Keep running." And he turned back to face the crippled animal as it launched itself from the ledge into the bed of the river. It was only then that Jake realized that he still carried a full bottle of Scrubbs Ammonia in his hand. The lion came bounding swiftly through the shallow stagnant pool towards him. Despite the wounds, it followed with lithe and sinuous menace. it was so close that he could see each stiff white whisker in the curled upper lip and hear the rattle of air in its throat. He let it come on, for to turn and run was suicide. At the last moment he reared back like a baseball pitcher and hurled the bottle.

Jake Barton is an American engineer, Gareth Swalles (a stylish Englishman with a nose for a quick deal. Both have always moved from one escapade to another. Now, as Mussolini prepares to annihilate the people of Ethiopia, the two adventurers come up against Vicky Camberwell, the beautiful but fiery reporter bent on espousing their cause. Striking a bargain with a beleaguered Ethiopian prince, the trio dares to run gauntlet guns and a batch of run-down armoured cars in a final, desperate gamble for freedom..

To Jake Barton, machinery was always feminine with all the female's fascination, wiles and bitchery.

So when he first saw them standing in a row beneath the spreading dark green foliage of the mango trees, they became for him the iron ladies.

There were five of them, standing aloof from the other heaps of worn-out and redundant equipment that His Majesty's Government was offering for sale. Although it was June and the cooler season between the monsoons, yet the heat on this cloudless morning in Dares Salaam was mounting like a force-fed furnace and Jake went thankfully into the shade of the mangoes to stand closer to the ladies and begin his examination.

He glanced around the enclosed yard, and noticed that he seemed to be the only one interested in the five vehicles.

The motley crowd of potential buyers was picking over the heaps of broken shovels and Picks, the rows of battered wheelbarrows and the other mounds of unidentifiable rubbish.

He turned his attention back to the ladies, as he slipped off the light tropical moleskin jacket he wore and hung it on the branch of a mango tree.

The ladies were aristocrats fallen on hard times, their hard but rakish lines were dulled by the faded and scratched paintwork and the cancerous blotches of rust that showed through. The foxy-faced fruit bats that hung inverted in the mango branches above them had splattered them with their dung, and oil and grease had oozed from their elderly joints and caked with dust in unsightly black streaks and blobs.

Jake knew their lineage and their history and as he laid aside the small carpet bag that held his tools, he reviewed it swiftly. Five fine pieces of craftsmanship lying rotting away on the fever coast of Tanganyika. The bodies and chassis had been built by Schreiner the stately high cupola in which the open mounting for the Maxim machine gun now glared like an empty eye-socket, the square sloping platform of the engine housing, with its heavy armour plate and the neat rows of rivets and the steel shutters that could be closed to protect the radiator against incoming enemy fire.

They stood tall on the metal bossed wheels with their solid rubber tyres, and Jake felt a sneaking regret that he would be the one to tear their engines out of them and toss aside the worn-out but gallant old bodies.

They did not deserve such cavalier treatment, these fighting iron ladies who in their youth had chased the wily German commander von Lettow-Vorbeck across the wide plains and over the fierce hills of East Africa. The thorns of the wilderness had deeply scarred the paintwork of the five armoured cars and there were places where rifle fire had glanced off their armour, leaving the distinctive dimple in the steel.

Those were their grandest days, streaming into battle with their cavalry pennants flying, dust billowing behind them, bounding and crashing through the don gas and ant bear holes, their machine guns blazing and the terrified German askaris scattering before them.

After that, the original engines had been replaced by the beautiful new 6 litre Bentleys, and they had begun the long decline of police patrol work on the border, chasing the occasional cattle raider and slowly being pounded by a succession of brutal drivers into the condition which had at last brought them here to the Government sale yards in this fiery May of the year of our Lord 1935. But Jake knew that even the savage abuse to which they had been subjected could not have destroyed the engines completely and that was what interested him.

He rolled up his sleeves like a surgeon about to begin his examination.

"Ready or not, girls, "he muttered, "here comes old Jake." He was a tall man with a big bony frame that was cramped in the confined area of the armoured car's body, but he worked with a quiet concentration so close to rapture that the discomfort went unnoticed. Jake's wide friendly mouth was pursed in a whistle that went on endlessly, the opening bars of "Tiger Rag" repeated over and over again, and his eyes were screwed up against the gloom of the interior.

He worked swiftly, checking the throttle and ignition settings of the controls, tracing out the fuel lines from the rear-mounted fuel tank, finding the cocks under the driver's seat and grunting with satisfaction. He scrambled out of the turret and dropped down the high side of the vehicle, pausing to wipe away with his forearm the thin trickle of sweat that broke from his thick curly black hair and ran down his cheek, then he hurried forward and knocked the clamps open on the side flaps of the armoured engine-cover.

"Oh sweet, sweet!" he whispered, as he saw the fine outlines of the old Bentley engine block beneath the layer of thick dust and greasy filth.

His hands with the big square palms and thick spatulate fingers went out to touch it with what was almost a caress.

"The bastards have beaten you up, darling," he whispered.

"But we will have you singing again as lovely as ever, that's a promise." He pulled the dipstick from the engine sump and took a drop of oil between his fingers.

"Shit!" he grunted with disgust, as he felt the grittiness, and he thrust the stick back into its slot. He pulled the plugs and, with the promise of a shilling, had a loitering African swing the crank for him while he felt the compression against the palm of his hand.

Swiftly he moved along the line of armoured cars, checking, probing and testing, and when he reached the last of them he knew he could have three of them running again for certain and four maybe.

One was shot beyond hope. There was a crack in the engine block through which he could have ridden a horse, and the pistons had seized so solid in their pots that not even the combined muscle upon the crank handle of Jake and his helper could move them.

Two of them had the entire carburettor assemblies missing, but he could cannibalize from the wreck. That left him short of one carburettor and he felt only gloom at his chances of finding another in Dares Salaam.

Three, then, he could reckon on with certainty. At one hundred and ten pounds apiece, that was 030. Less an estimated outlay of one hundred, it gave him a clear profit of two hundred and thirty pounds for surely he would not have to bid more than twenty pounds each for these wrecks.

Jake felt a warm spreading glow of satisfaction as he tossed his African helper the promised shilling. Two hundred and thirty pounds was a great deal of money in these lean and hungry times.

A quick glance at the fob-watch he hauled from his back pocket showed him there was still over two hours before the advertised time of the commencement of the sale. He was impatient to begin work on those Bentleys not only for the money. For Jake it would be a labour of love.

The one in the centre of the line seemed the best bet for quick results. He placed his carpet bag on the armoured wing of the mudguard and selected a Yth-inch spanner.

Immediately he was totally absorbed.

After half an hour he pulled his head out of the engine, wiped his hands on a handful of cotton waste and hurried around to the front of the car.

The big muscles in his right arm bunched and rippled as he swung the crank handle, spinning the heavy engine easily with a steady whirring rhythm. After a minute of this, he released the handle and wiped off his sweat with the cotton waste that left grease marks down his cheeks.

He was breathing quickly but lightly.

"I knew you for a temperamental bitch the moment I laid eyes on you," he muttered. "But you are going to do it my way, darling. You really are." Once more his head and shoulders disappeared under the engine cowling and there was the clink of the spanner against metal and the monotonous repetition of "Tiger Rag" in a low off-key whistle for another ten minutes, then again Jake went to the crank handle.

"You are going to do it my way, baby and what's more you're going to like it." He spun the handle and the engine kicked viciously, back-fired like a rifle shot, and the crank handle snapped out of Jake's hand with enough force to have taken his thumb off if he had been holding it with an opposed grip.

"Jesus," whispered Jake, "a real little hell catV He scrambled up into the turret and reached down to the controls and reset the ignition.

At the next swing of the crank handle she bucked and fired, caught and surged, then fell back into a steady beat, quivering slightly on her rigid suspension, but come alive.

Jake stepped back, sweating, flushed, but with his dark green eyes shining with delight.

"Oh you beauty, "he said. "You bloody little beauty."

"Bravo," said a voice behind him, and Jake started and turned quickly. He had forgotten that he was not the only person left on earth, in his complete absorption with the machine, and now he felt embarrassed, as though he had been observed in some intimate and private bodily function.

He glowered at the figure that was leaning elegantly against the hole of the mango tree.

"Jolly good show," said the stranger, and the voice was sufficient to stir the hair upon the nape of Jake's neck. It was one of those pricey Limey accents.

The man was dressed in a cream suit of expensive tropical linen and two-tone shoes of white and brown. On his head he wore a white straw hat with a wide brim that cast a shadow over his face. But Jake could see the man had a friendly smile and an easy engaging manner. He was handsome in a conventional manner, with noble and regular features, a face that had flustered many a female's emotions and that fitted well with the voice. He would he a ranking government official probably, or an officer in one of the regular regiments stationed in Dares Salaam.

Upper class establishment, even to the necktie with its narrow diagonal stripes by which the British advertised at which seat of learning they had obtained their education and their place in the social order.

"It didn't take you long to get her going." The man lolled gracefully against the mango, his ankles crossed and one hand thrust into his coat pocket. He smiled again, and this time Jake saw the mockery and challenge in the eyes more clearly. He had judged him wrongly. This was not one of those cardboard men. They were pirate eyes, mocking and wolfish, dangerous as the glint of a knife in the shadows.

"I have no doubt the others are in as good a state of repair." It was an enquiry, not a statement.

"Well, you're wrong, friend. "Jake felt a pang of dismay. It was absurd that this fancy lad could have a real interest in the five vehicles but if he did, then Jake had just given him a generous demonstration of their value. "This is the only one that will run, and even her guts are blown. Listen to her knock. Sounds like a mad carpenter." He reached under the cowling and earthed the magneto.

In the sudden silence as the engine died, he said loudly, "Junk!"

and spat on the ground near the front wheel but not on it. He couldn't bring himself to do that. Then he gathered his tools, flung his jacket over his shoulder, hefted the carpet bag and, without another glance at the Englishman, ambled off towards the gates of the works yard.

"You not bidding then, old chap?" The stranger had left his post at the mango and fallen into step beside him.

"God, no." Jake tried to fill his voice with disdain. "Are you?"

"Now what would I do with five broken-down armoured cars?" The man laughed silently, and then went on, "Yankee, are you? Texas, what?"

"You've been reading my mail." Engineer?" :1 try, I try."

"Buy you a drink?"

"Give me the money. instead. I've got a train to catch." The elegant stranger laughed again, a light friendly laugh.

"God speed, then, old chap," he said, and Jake hurried out through the gates into the dusty heat-dazed streets of noonday Dares Salaam and walked away without a backward glance, trying to convey with his determined stride and the set of his shoulders that his departure was final.

Jake found a canteen around the first corner and within five minutes" walk of the works yard, where he went into hiding. The Tusker beer he ordered was blood warm, but he drank it while he worried. The English, man gave him a very queasy feeling, his interest was too bright to be mere curiosity. On the other hand, however, Jake might have to go over the twenty pounds bid that he had calculated and he took from the inside pocket of his jacket the worn pigskin wallet that contained his entire worldly wealth and, prudently using the table top as a screen, he counted the wad of notes.

Five hundred and seventeen pounds in Bank of England notes, three hundred and twenty-seven dollars in United States currency, and four hundred and ninety East African shillings was not a great fortune with which to take on the likes of the elegant Limey. However, Jake drained his warm beer, set his jaw and inspected his watch once more. It gave him five minutes to noon.

Major Gareth Swales was mildly dismayed, but not at all surprised to see the big American entering the works yard gates once more in a manner which was obviously intended to be unobtrusive but reminded him of Jack Dempsey sidling furtively into an old ladies" tea party.

Gareth Swales sat in the shade of the mangoes upon an upturned wheelbarrow, over which he had spread a silk handkerchief to protect the pristine linen of his suit. He had set aside his straw hat, and his hair was meticulously trimmed and combed, shining softly in that rare colour between golden blond and red, and there was just a sparkle of silver in the wings at his temples. His mustache was the same colour and carefully moulded to the curve of his upper lip. His face was deeply tanned by the tropical sun to a dark chestnut brown, so that the contrasting blue of his eyes was startlingly pale and penetrating, as he watched Jake Barton cross the yard to join the gathering of buyers under the mango trees. He sighed with resignation and returned his attention to the folded envelope on which he was making his financial calculations.

He really was finely drawn out, the previous eighteen months had been very unkind to him. The cargo that had been seized in the Liao River by the Japanese gunboat when he was only hours away from delivering it to the Chinese commander at Mukden and receiving payment for it had wiped away the accumulated capital of ten years. It had taken all his ingenuity and a deal of financial agility to assemble the package that was stored at this moment in No.

4 warehouse down at the main docks of Dares Salaam port.

His buyers would be arriving to take delivery in twelve days and the five armoured cars would have rounded out the package beautifully.

Armour, by God, he could fix his own price. Only aircraft would have been more desirable from his client's point of view.

Gareth had first seen them that morning in their neglected and decrepit state of repair, he had discounted them completely, and was on the point of turning away when he had noticed the long muscular pair of legs protruding from the engine of one of the vehicles and heard the barely recognizable strains of "Tiger Rag'.

Now he knew that one of them at least was a runner. A few gallons of paint, and a new Vickers machine gun set in the mountings, and the five machines would look magnificent. Gareth would give one of his justly famous sales routines. He would start the one good engine and fire the machine gun by God, the jolly old prince would pull out his purse and start spilling sovereigns all over the scenery.

There was only the damned Yankee to worry about, it might cost him a few bob more than he had reckoned to edge him out, but Gareth was not too worried. The man looked as though he would have difficulty raising the price of a beer.

Gareth flicked at his sleeve where a speck of dust might have settled; he placed the panama back on his golden head, adjusted the wide brim carefully and removed the long slim cheroot from his lips to inspect the ash, before he rose and sauntered across to the group.

The auctioneer was an elfin Sikh in a black silk suit with his beard twisted up under his chin, and a large dazzling white turban wrapped about his head.

He was perched like a little black bird on the turret of the nearest armoured car, and his voice was plaintive as he pleaded with the audience that stared up at him stolidly with expressionless faces and glazed eyes.

"Come, gentle mens let me be hearing some mellifluous voice cry out "ten pounds". Do I hear "ten pounds each" for these magnificent conveyances?" He cocked his head and listened to the hot noon breeze in the top branches of the mango. Nobody moved, nobody spoke.

"Five pounds, please? Will some wise gentle mens tell me five pounds?

Two pounds ten gentle mens for a mere fifty shillings these royal machines, these fine, these beautiful-" He broke off, and lowered his gaze, placed a delicate chocolate brown hand over his troubled brow. "A price, gentle mens Please, start me with a price."

"One pound!" a voice called in the lilting accents of the Texan ranges. For a moment the Sikh did not move, then raised his head with dramatic slowness and stared at Jake who towered above the crowd around him.

"A pound?" the Sikh whispered huskily. "Twenty shillings each for these fine, these beautiful-" he broke off and shook his head sorrowfully. Then abruptly his manner changed and became brisk and businesslike. "One pound, I am bid.

40, I Do I hear two, two pounds? No advance on one pound?

Going for the first time at one pound!" Gareth Swales drifted forward, and the crowd opened miraculously, drawing aside respectfully.

"Two pounds." He spoke softly, but his voice carried clearly in the hush. Jake's long angular frame stiffened, and a dark wine-coloured flush spread slowly up the back of his neck. Slowly, his head swivelled and he stared across at the Englishman who had now reached the front row.

Gareth smiled brilliantly and tipped the brim of his panama to acknowledge Jake's glare. The Sikh's commercial instinct instantly sensed the rivalry between them and his mood brightened.

"I have two--" he chirruped.

Five," snapped Jake.

"Ten," murmured Gareth, and Jake felt a hot uncontrollable anger come seething up from his guts. He knew the feeling so well, and he tried to control it, but it was no use.

It came up in a savage red tide to swamp his reason.

The crowd stirred with delight, and all their heads swung in unison towards the tall American.

"Fifteen," said jake, "and every head swung back towards the slim Englishman.

Gareth inclined his head gracefully.

"Twenty," piped the Sikh delightedly. "I have twenty."

"And five." Dimly through the mists of his anger, Jake knew that there was no way that he would let the Limey have these ladies. If he couldn't buy them, he would burn them.

The Sikh sparkled at Gareth with gazelle eyes.

"Thirty, sir?" he asked, and Gareth grinned easily and waved his cheroot. He was experiencing a rising sense of alarm already they were far past what he had calculated was the Yank's limit.

"And five more." Jake's voice was gravelly with the strength of his outrage. They were his, even if he had to pay out every shilling in his wallet, they had to be his.

Forty." Gareth Swales's smile was slightly strained now.

He was fast approaching his own limit. The terms of the sale were cash or bank-guaranteed cheque. He had long ago milked every source of cash that was available to him, and any bank manager who guaranteed a Gareth Swales cheque was destined for a swift change of employment.

"Forty-five." Jake's voice was hard and uncompromising; he was fast approaching the figure where he would be working for nothing but the satisfaction of blocking out the Limey.

"Fifty."

"And five."

"Sixty."

"And another five." That was break-even price for Jake after this he was tossing away bright shining shillings.

"Seventy," drawled Gareth Swales, and that 411 at was his limit.

With regret he discarded all hopes of an easy acquisition of the cars.

Three hundred and fifty pounds represented his entire liquid reserves he could bid no further. All right, the easy way had not worked out.

There were a dozen other ways, and by one of them Gareth Swales was going to have them. By God, the prince might go as high as a thousand each and he was not going to pass by that sort of profit for lack of a few lousy hundred quid.

"Seventy-five," said Jake, and the crowd murmured and every eye flew to Major Gareth Swales.

"Ah, kind gentle mens do you speak of eighty?" enquired the Sikh eagerly. His commission was five per cent.

Graciously, but regretfully, Gareth shook his head.

"No, my dear chap. It was a mere whim of mine." He smiled across at Jake. "May they give you much joy," he said, and drifted away towards the gates. There was clearly nothing to be gained in approaching the American now.

The man was in a towering rage and Gareth had judged him as the type who habitually gave expression to this emotion by swinging with his fists. Long ago, Gareth Swales had reached the conclusion that only fools fight, and wise men supply them with the means to do so at a profit, naturally.

It was three days before Jake Barton saw the Englishman again and during that time he had towed the five iron ladies to the outskirts of the town where he had set up his camp on the banks of a small stream among a stand of African mahogany trees.

With a block and tackle slung from the branch of a mahogany, he had lifted out the engines and worked on them far into each night by the smoky light of a hurricane lamp.

Coaxing and sweet-talking the machines, changing and juggling faulty and worn parts, hand-forging others on the charcoal brazier, whistling to himself endlessly, swearing and sweating and scheming, he had three of the Bentleys running by the afternoon of the third day.

Set up on improvised timber blocks, they had regained something of their former gleam and glory beneath his loving hands.

Gareth Swales arrived at Jake's camp in the somnolent heat of the third afternoon. He arrived in a ricksha pulled by a half-naked and sweating black man and he lolled with the grace of a resting leopard on the padded seat, looking cool in beautifully cut and snowy crisp linen.

Jake straightened up from the engine which he was tuning. He was naked to the waist and his arms were greased black to the elbows.

Sweat gleamed on his shoulders and chest, as though he had been oiled.

"Don't even bother to stop," Jake said softly. "Just keep straight on down the road, friend." Gareth grinned at him engagingly and from the seat beside him he lifted a large silver champagne bucket, frosted with dew, and tinkling with ice. Over the edge of the bucket showed the necks of a dozen bottles of Tusker beer.

"Peace offering, old chap," said Gareth, and Jake's throat contracted so violently with thirst that he couldn't speak for a moment.

"A free gift with no strings attached, what?" Even in this cloying humid heat, Jake Barton had been so completely absorbed by his task that he had taken little liquid in three days, and none of it was pale golden, bubbling and iced. His eyes began to water with the strength of his desire.

Gareth dismounted from the ricksha and came forward with the champagne bucket under one arm.

"Swales," he said. "Major Gareth Swales," and held out his hand.

"Barton. Jake." Jake took the hand, but his eyes were still fixed on the bucket.

Twenty minutes later, Jake sat waist-deep in a steaming galvanized iron bath, set out alfresco under the mahogany trees. The bottle of Tusker stood close at hand and he whistled happily as he worked up a foaming lather in his armpits and across the dark hairy plain of his chest.

"Trouble was, we got off on the wrong foot," explained Gareth, and sipped at the neck of a Tusker bottle. He made it seem he was taking Dam Nrignon from a crystal flute. He was lying back in Jake's single canvas camp chair under the shade flap of the old sun-faded tent.

"Friend, you nearly got a wrong foot right up your backside." But Jake's threat was without fire, marinated in Tusker.

I understand how you felt," said Gareth. "But then "I surely understood you did tell me you weren't bidding. If only you had told me the truth, we could have worked out an arrangement." Jake reached out with a soap-frothed hand and lifted the Tusker bottle to his lips.

He swallowed twice, sighed and belched softly.

"Bless you," said Gareth, and then went on. "As soon as I "Ble realized that you were bidding seriously, I backed out. I knew that you and I could make a mutually beneficial deal later. And so here I am now, drinking beer with you and talking a deal."

"You are talking I'm just listening, "Jake pointed out.

"Rite so." Gareth took out his cheroot case, carefully selected one and leaned forward to place it tenderly between Jake's willing lips. He struck a match off the sole of his boot and cupped the match for Jake.

"It seems clear to me that you have a buyer for the cars, right?"

"I'm still listening." Jake exhaled a long feather of cheroot smoke with evident pleasure.

"You must have a price already set, and I am prepared to better that price." Jake took the cheroot out of his mouth and for the first time regarded Gareth levelly.

"You want all five cars at that price in their present condition?"

"Right," said Gareth.

What if I tell you that only three are runners two are "shot all to hell."

"That wouldn't affect my offer." Jake reached out and drained the Tusker bottle. Gareth opened another for him and placed it in his hand.

Swiftly Jake ran over the offer. He had an open contract with Anglo-Tanganyika Sugar Company to supply gasoline powered sugar-cane crushers at a fixed price of 110 pounds each.

From the three cars he could make up three units maximum of 330pounds.

The Limey's offer was for all five units, at a price to be determined.

"I've done one hell of a lot of work on them," Jake softened him a little.

"I can see that."

"One hundred and fifty pounds each for all five. That's seven hundred and fifty."

"You would replace the engines and make them look all ship-shape."

"Sure."

"Done," said Gareth. "I knew we could work something out," and they beamed at each other.

"I'll make out a deed of sale right away," Gareth produced a cheque book, "and then I'll give you my cheque for the full amount."

"Your what? "The beam on Jake's face faded.

"My personal cheque on Courts of Piccadilly." It was true that Gareth Swales did have a chequing account with Courts. According to his last statement, the account was in debit to the sum of eighteen pounds seventeen and sixpence. The manager had written him a spicy little letter in red ink.

"Safe as the Bank of England." Gareth flourished his cheque book.

It would take three weeks for the cheque to be presented in London and bounce through the roof. By that time, he hoped to be on his way to Madrid. There looked to be a very profitable little piece of business brewing up satisfactorily in that area, and by then Gareth Swales would have the capital to exploit it.

"Funny thing about cheques." Jake removed the cheroot from his mouth.

"They bring me out in a rash. If it's all the same to you, I'll just take the seven fifty in cash money."

Ok Gareth pursed his lips. Very well, so it wasn't going to be that easy either.

"Dear me," he said. "It will take a little while to clear."

"No hurry, "Jake grinned at him. "Any time before noon tomorrow.

That's the delivery date I have for my original buyer. You be here with the money before that, and they are all yours." He rose abruptly from the bath, cascading soapy water, and his black servant handed him a towel.

"What plans have you for dinner?" Gareth asked.

"I think Abou here has cooked up a pot of his lion-killing stew."

"Won't you be my guest at the Royal?"

"I drank your beer for free why shouldn't I eat your food?" asked Jake reasonably.

The dining room of the Royal Hotel had high ceilings and tall insect-screened sash windows. The mechanical fans set in the roof stirred the warm humid air sluggishly "into a substitute for coolness, and Gareth Swales was a splendid host.

His engaging charm was irresistible, and his choice of food and wine induced in Jake a sense of such well-being that they laughed together like old friends, and were delighted to find that they had mutual acquaintances mostly harm en and brothel-keepers in various parts of the world and that they had parallel experience.

Gareth had been doing business with a revolutionary leader in Venezuela while Jake was helping build the railroad in that same country. Jake had been chief engineer on a Blake Line coaster on the China run when Gareth had been making contact with the Chinese Communists on Yellow River.

They had been in France at the same time, and on that terrible day at Amiens, when the German machine guns had accelerated Gareth Swales's promotion from subaltern to major in the space of six hours, Jake had been four miles down the line, a sergeant driver in the Royal Tank Corps seconded from the American Third Army.

They discovered that they were almost of an age, neither of them yet forty, but that both of them had packed a world of experience and wandering into that short span, They recognized in each other that same restlessness that was always driving them on to new adventure, never staying long enough in one place or at one job to grow roots, unfettered by offspring or possessions, by spouse or responsibilities, taking up each new adventure eagerly and discarding it again without qualms or regrets, Always moving onwards never looking backwards.

Understanding each other a little, they began to respect one another.

Halfway through the meal, they were no longer scornful of the other's differences. Neither of them thought of the other as Limey or Yank any longer but this didn't mean that Jake was about to accept any cheques or that Gareth had given up his plans to acquire the five armoured cars. At last Gareth swilled the last few drops around his brandy balloon and glanced at his pocket watch.

"Nine o'clock. It's too early for bed. What shall we do now?"

Jake suggested, "There are two new girls down at Madame Cecile's. They came in on the mail boat." Gareth quickly turned the suggestion aside.

"Later perhaps but too soon after dinner, it gives me heartburn.

You don't, by any chance, feel like a few hands at cards? There is usually a decent game down at the club."

"We can't go in there. We aren't members."

"I have reciprocity with my London club, old boy.

Sign you in, what?" They had played for an hour and a half. Jake was enjoying the game. He liked the style of the establishment, for he usually played in less salubrious surroundings the back room behind the bar, an upturned fruit-crate behind the main boiler in an engine room, or a scratch game in a dockside warehouse.

This was a hushed room with draped velvet curtains, expanses of dark wood panelling, dark-toned oil paintings and hunting trophies shaggy-maned lions, buffalo with huge bossed horns drooping mournfully, all of them staring down with glassy eyes from the walls.

From the three billiard tables came the discreet click of the ivory balls, as half a dozen players in dress shirts and braces, black ties and black trousers, evening jackets discarded for the game, leaned across the heavy green-topped tables to play their shots.

There were three tables of contract bridge from which came the murmur of bid and counter bid in the cultivated tones of the British upper class, all the players in the dress that Jake thought of as penguin suits black and white, with black bows.

Between the tables, the waiters moved on silent bare feet, in ankle-length white robes and pillbox fez, like priests of some ancient religion bearing trays of sparkling crystal glass.

There was only one table of draw poker, a huge teak structure with brass ashtrays set into the woodwork, and niches and trays to hold the whisky glasses and the coloured ivory chips. At the table sat five players, and only Jake was not in evening dress the other three were the type of poker players that Jake would dearly love to have kept locked up for his exclusive pleasure.

There was a minor British peer, out in Africa to decimate the wildlife.

He had recently returned from the interior, where a white hunter had stood respectfully at his elbow with a heavy-calibre rifle, while the peer mowed down vast numbers of buffalo, lion and rhinoceros.

This gentleman had a nervous tic under his right eye which jumped whenever he held three of a kind or better in his hand.

Despite this affliction, a phenomenal run of good cards had allowed him to be the only winner, other than Jake, at the table.

There was a coffee planter with a deeply tanned and wrinkled face who made an involuntary little hissing sound whenever he improvised on the draw or squeezed out a pleasing combination.

On Jake's right hand was an elderly civil servant with thinning hair and a fever-yellow complexion who broke out in a muck sweat whenever he judged himself on the point of winning a pot an expectation which was seldom realized.

In an hour's careful play, Jake had built up his winnings to a little over a hundred pounds and he felt very warm and contented down there where his dinner was digesting. The only element in his life that afforded him any disquiet was his new friend and sponsor.

Gareth Swales sat at his ease, conversing with the peer as an equal, condescending graciously to the planter and commiserating with the civil servant on his run of luck. He had neither won nor lost any significant amount, yet he handled the cards with a dexterity that was impressive. In those long tapering fingers with the carefully manicured nails, the pasteboards rustled and rippled, blurred and snapped, with a speed that defied the eye.

Jake watched carefully, without appearing to do so, whenever the deal passed to Major Gareth Swales. There is no way that a dealer, even with the most magical touch, can stack a deck of cards without facing them during the shuffle and Gareth never faced the deck as he manipulated it. His eyes never even dropped to the cards, but played lightly over the faces of the others as he chatted. Jake began to relax a little.

The planter dealt him four to an open-ended flush, and he filled it with the six of hearts. The civil servant, who had an insatiable curiosity, called his raise to twenty pounds and sighed and muttered mournfully as he paid the ivory chips into the pot and Jake swept them away and stacked them neatly in front of him.

"Let's have a new pack-" smiled Gareth, lifting a finger for a servant, and hope that it breaks your run of luck." Gareth offered the seal on the new pack for inspection, then split it with his thumbnail and unwrapped the pristine cards with their bicycle-wheel designs, fanned them, lifted the jokers and began to shuffle, at the same time starting a very funny and obscene story about a bishop who entered the women's rest room at Choring Cross Station in error.

The joke took a minute or two in the telling and in the roar of masculine laughter that followed, Gareth began to deal, skimming the cards across the green baize, so that they piled up neatly before each player. Only Jake had noticed that during the bishop's harrowing experiences in the ladies" room, Gareth had blocked the cards between shuffles, and that each time as he lifted the two blocks he had rolled his wrists so that for a fleeting instant they had fanned slightly and faced.

Guffawing loudly, the baron gathered up his hand and looked at it.

He choked in the middle of his next guffaw, and his eyelid started to jump and twitch, as though it was making love to his nose. From across the table came a loud hiss of indrawn breath as the planter closed his cards quickly and covered them with both hands. At Jake's right hand, the civil servant's face shone like polished yellow ivory and a little trickle of sweat broke from his thinning hairline, ran down his nose, and dripped unheeded on to the front of his dress shirt, as he stared at his cards.

Jake opened his own cards, and glanced at the three queens it contained. He sighed and began his own story.

"When I was first engineer on the old Harvest Maid tied up in Kowloon, the skipper brought a fancy little dude on board and we all got into a game. The stakes kept jumping up and up, and just after midnight this dude dealt one hell of a hand." Nobody appeared to be listening to Jake's story, they were all too absorbed with their own cards.

"The skipper ended up with four kings, I got four jacks and the ship's doctor pulled a mere four tens." Jake rearranged the queens in his hand and broke off his story while Gareth Swales fulfilled the civil servant's request for two cards.

"The dude himself took one card from the draw and the betting went mad.

We were throwing everything we owned into the pot. Thanks, friend, I'll take two cards also." Gareth flicked two cards across the table, and Jake discarded from his hand before picking them up.

"As I was saying, we were almost stripping off our underpants to throw it all in the middle. I was in for a little over a thousand bucks Jake squeezed open the new cards and could hardly suppress a grin. All the ladies were there. Four pretty little queens peered out at him.

"We signed IOUs, we pledged our wages, and the dude came right along on the ride, not pushing the betting but staying right there."

Gareth gave the baron one card and drew one himself.

They were listening now, eyes darting from Jake's lips to their own cards.

"Well, when it came to the showdown, we were looking at each other across a pile of cash that came to the ceiling and the dude hit us with a straight flush. I remember it so clearly, in clubs three to the eight. It took the skipper and me twelve hours to recover from the shock and then we worked out the odds on that deal just happening naturally it was something like sixteen million to one. The odds were against the dude and we went looking for him. Found him down at the old Peninsula Hotel, spending our hard-won gold. We were preparing for sea at the time. Our boilers were cold. We sat the dude on top of them, and fired them.

Had to tie him down, of course, and after a few hours his knockers, were roasting like chestnuts."

"By God," exclaimed the peer.

"How awful."

"Quite right," Jake agreed. "Hell of a stink in my engine room." A heavy charged silence settled over the table all of them aware that something explosive was about to happen, that an accusation had been made, but most of them not certain what the accusation was, and at whom it had been levelled. They held up their cards like protective shields, and their eyes darted suspiciously from face to face. The atmosphere was so tense that it pervaded the gracious room, and the players at the other tables paused and looked up.

I think," Gareth Swales drawled in crisp tones that carried to every corner of the listening room, "that what Mr. Barton is trying to say is that somebody is cheating." That word, spoken in these surroundings, was so shocking, so charged with dire consequence, that strong men gasped and blanched. Cheating in the club, by God, better a man be accused of adultery or ordinary murder.

"I must say that I have to agree with Mr. Barton." The icy blue eyes snapped with angry lights, and he turned deliberately to the bewildered member of the House of lords beside him.

"I wonder if you would be good enough, sir, to inform us as to the exact amount of our money that you have won." The voice cracked like a whiplash, and the peer stared at him with complete incomprehension for a moment and then his face mottled purple and crimson, and he gobbled angrily.

"Sir! How dare you. Good God, sir!-" and he rose in his seat, breathless, choking with outrage.

"Have at him!" cried Gareth, and overturned the heavy teak table with a single upward thrust of both hands. It crashed over, pinning the planter and the civil servant under it, and scattering ivory chips and playing cards in such profusion that nobody would ever know what cards Gareth Swales had dealt to himself in that last remarkable deal.

Gareth leaned across the struggling mass of downed players and clipped the peer smartly under the left ear.

"Cheating! Ha! Caught you cheating!" The peer roared like a bull and swung a full-armed punch under which Gareth ducked lightly, but which went on to catch the club secretary between the eyes, as he hurried up to intervene.

The room erupted into violence, as the other members rushed in to assist the secretary.

Jake tried to reach Gareth, through the sudden seething storm of bodies.

"Not him, you!" he shouted angrily, flexing his arms and knotting his fists.

There were forty club members in the room. Only one person was not dressed in the uniform that showed they belonged Jake in his baggy moleskins and the pack turned on him.

"Watch out behind you, old boy," Gareth warned Jake in a friendly fashion, as he reached out to take the lapels of Gareth's suit in his hands.

Jake whirled to meet the rush of angry members, and the fists that were bunched for Major Swales thudded into the charging group. Two of them dropped but the rest swarmed on.

"Lay on!" Gareth encouraged him merrily. "And damned be he who cries "Enough"." Miraculously he had armed himself with a billiard cue.

By now, Jake was almost totally submerged under a heaving mound of black evening dress. There were three of them riding on his back, two hanging around his legs, and one tucked under each of his arms.

"Not me, you fools. Not me him!" He tried to point to Gareth, but both his arms were occupied.

"Quite right," Gareth agreed. "Dirty cheating dog!" and he wielded the billiard cue with uncanny skill, holding it inverted and tapping the thick end smartly against the skulls of the well-dressed gentlemen riding on Jake's back. They dropped away, and freed of their weight Jake turned to Gareth once more.

"Listen-!" he bellowed, advancing despite the bodies that clung to his legs.

"Listen, indeed." Gareth cocked his head, and the sound of a police whistle shrilled, and there was the glimpse of uniforms beyond double doors. "Peelers, by Jove, Gareth announced. "Perhaps we should move on. Follow me, old son." With a few expert swings of the billiard cue, he knocked the glass from the window beside him, and stepped lightly and unruffled into the darkened garden.

Jake strode along the unlit footpath under the dark jacaranda trees. He followed the main road out towards his camp beside the stream. The outraged cries and the sound of police whistles had long since died away in the night behind.

Jake's anger had also died away, and he chuckled once as he thought of the peer's purple face and his bulging affronted eyes. Then behind him, following along the dark street, he heard the rhythmic squeak of the springs of a ricksha, and the pad of bare feet.

Even before he looked back, he knew who was following.

"Thought I'd lost you," Gareth Swales remarked lightly, his handsome noble features lit by the glow of the cheroot between his teeth as he lolled against the cushions of the ricksha. "You took off like a long dog after a bitch. fantastic turn of speed. I was very impressed."

Jake said nothing, but strode on towards his camp.

"You can't possibly be bound for bed." The ricksha kept station beside Jake. "The night is still a pup and who can say what beautiful thoughts and stirring deeds Care still to be thought and performed."

Jake tried not to grin, and kept going.

"Madame Cecile's?"Gareth wheedled.

"You really do want those cars don't you?"

"I am hurt," announced Gareth, "that you should imply gross materialism to my friendly overtures."

"Who is paying? "demanded Jake.

"You are my guest."

"Well, I've drunk your beer, eaten your food why should I stop now?" He stopped and walked to the ricksha. "Move over, then, he said.

The ricksha driver wheeled in a tight turn and trotted back into the town, while Gareth pressed a cheroot between Jake's lips.

"What did you deal yourself?" Jake asked, between puffs of the fragrant smoke. "Four aces? Straight flush?"

"I am appalled at the implied slur on my character, sir. I shall ignore the question." They jogged a little farther in silence until it was Gareth's turn to ask the next question.

"You didn't really roast that poor fellow's chestnuts, did you?"

No, "Jake admitted. "But it made a better story." They reached the door of Madame Cecile's, discreetly set back in a walled garden, with a lamp burning over the lintel.

Gareth paused with his hand on the brass knocker.

"You know damned if I don't owe you an apology. I've misjudged you all along the line."

"It's been a lot of laughs."

"I think I'm going to have to be honest with you."

"I don't know if I can stand the shock." They grinned at each other and Gareth punched his shoulder lightly.

"It's still my treat, what?" Madame Cecile was so tall and thin and bosorriless that she seemed in danger of snapping off like a brittle stick. She wore a severely cut dress of dark and indeterminate colour which swept the ground and buttoned up under her chin and at the wrists. Her hair was drawn back tightly into a large bun at the back of her neck and her expression was prim and disapproving, but it softened a little when she let them into the front room.

"Major Swales, it is always a pleasure. Mr. Barton, we haven't seen you in a long while. I was afraid you'd left town."

"Let us have a bottle of Charlie Champers, my dear." Gareth handed his silk scarf to the maid. "Have you run out of the Pal Roger 1923?"

"Indeed not, Major."

"And we'd like to talk alone for a while before meeting any of the young tallies. Is your private lounge vacant?" Gareth was settled comfortably in one of the big leather armchairs with a glass of champagne in one hand and a cheroot in the other.

Duce is about to put himself in to bat. Though God alone knows what he hopes to gain by it. From all accounts, it's the most desolate stretch of desert and mountain one could imagine. However, Mussolini wants it perhaps he has visions of empire and glory. The old Napoleonic itch, you know."

"How do you know this?" Jake was sprawled on the buttoned couch across the room. He wasn't drinking the champagne. He didn't like the taste.

"It's my business to know, old chap. I can smell out a barney before the fellows themselves know they are going to fight. This one is a racing certainty. Duce is going through all the classic stages of protestations of peaceful intentions, combined with wholesale military preparations.

The other big powers France, our chaps and yours have given him the wink. Of course, they'll all squeal like blazes, and make all sorts of protests at the League of Nations but nobody is about to stop old Benito making a big grab for Ethiopia. hail Selassie, the king of kings, knows it and so is princes and roses an c ieftains and merry men.

And they are desperately trying to prepare some kind of defence.

That's where I come in, old boy."

"Why must they buy from you at the prices you say they are offering?

Surely they could get this sort of stuff direct from the manufacturers?"

"Embargo, old chap. The League of Nations have slapped an arms embargo on the whole of Eritrea, Somaliland and Ethiopia. No imports of war material into the area.

It's intended to reduce tension but of course it works out completely one-sided. Mussolini doesn't have to go shopping for his armaments he has all the guns, aircraft and armour that he needs already landed at Eritrea. just ready to go and the jolly old Ethiopia has a few ancient rifles and a lot of those long two-anded swords. It should be a close match.

You aren't drinking your Charlie Champers?"

"I think I'll go get myself a Tusker. Back in a minute. "Jake rose and moved to the door and Gareth shook his head sadly.

"You've got taste buds like a crocodile's back. Tusker, forsooth, when I'm offering you a vintage Charlie." It was more for a chance to think out his position and plan his moves than desire for beer that made Jake seek the bar in the front room. He leaned against the counter in the crowded room, and his mind went swiftly over what Gareth Swales had told him. He tried to decide how much was fact and how much was fantasy. How the facts affected him and where, if there were any, the profits to himself might lie.

He had almost decided not to involve himself in the deal there were too many thorns along that path and to go ahead with his original intentions, selling the engines as cane-crushing units when he was made the victim of one of those coincidences which were too neat not to be one of the sardonic jokes of fate.

Beside him at the bar were two young men in the sober dress of clerks or accountants. Each of them had a girl tucked under his arm and they fondled them absentmindedly as they talked in loud assertive voices.

Jake had been too busy making his decision to follow this conversation until a name caught his attention.

"By the way, did you hear that Anglo Sugar has gone bang?"

"No, I

don't believe it."

"It's true. Heard it from the Master of the Court himself.

They say they've gone bust for half a million."

"Good God that's the third big company this month."

"It's hard times we live in. This will bring down a lot of little men with it." Jake agreed silently. He poured the beer into his glass, tossed a coin on the counter and headed back for the private lounge.

They were hard times indeed, Jake thought. This was the second time in as many months that he had been caught up in them.

The freighter on which he had arrived in Dares Salaam as chief engineer had been seized by the sheriff of the court as surety in a bankruptcy action. The owners had gone bust in London, and the ship had been unable to pay off.

Jake had walked down the gang-plank with all his worldly possessions in the kit-bag over his shoulder abandoning his claim to almost six months" back wages, together with all his savings in the bankrupt company's pension fund.

He had just started to shape up with the cane-crusher contract, when once again the tidal waves of depression sweeping across the world had swamped him. They were all going bang the big ones and the small, and Jake Barton now found himself the owner of five armoured cars for which there remained but a single buyer in the market.

Gareth was standing by the window, looking down to the harbor where the lights of the anchored ships flickered across the dark waters. He turned to face Jake and went on as though there had been no break in the conversation.

"While we are still being disgustingly honest with each other, let me estimate that the Ethiopians would pay as much as a thousand pounds each for those vehicles. Of course, they would have to be spruced up.

A coat of paint, and a machine gun in the turret."

"I'm still listening. "Jake sank back on the couch.

"I have the buyer lined up and the Vickers machine without which the cars have no value. You have the guns, vehicles themselves and the technical know-how to get them working." Jake was seeing a different man in Gareth Swales now.

The lazy drawling voice and foppish manner were gone. He spoke crisply and once again there was the piratical blue sparkle in his eyes.

"I have never worked with a partner before. I always knew I could do it better on my own but I've had a chance to get a good look at you.

This could be the first time. What do you think?"

"If you cross me, Gareth I will truly roast your chestnuts for you."

Gareth threw back his head and laughed delightedly. "I believe you really would, Jake!" He crossed the room and offered his hand.

"Equal partners. You put in the cars, and I'll throw in my pile of goodies everything down the middle?" he asked, and Jake took the hand.

"Right down the middle he agreed.

"That's enough business for tonight let's meet the ladies." Jake suggested that Gareth as a full partner might like to assist in refitting the engines and painting the body work of the cars, and Gareth blanched and lit a cheroot.

"Look here, old chap. Don't let's take this equal partners lark too far. Manual labour isn't really my style at all."

"I'll have to hire a gang, then."

"Please don't stint yourself Hire what and who you need." Gareth waved the cheroot magnanimously. "I've got to get down to the docks, grease a few palms and that sort of thing. Then I'm dining at Government House this evening, making the contacts that may be useful to us, you understand?" In a ricksha, bearing the silver champagne bucket full of Tusker, Gareth appeared at the camp under the mahogany trees the following morning to find half a dozen blacks labouring under Jake's supervision. The colour Jake had chosen was a businesslike battleship grey, and one of the cars had received its first coat. The effect was miraculous.

The vehicle had been transformed from a slovenly wreck into a formidable-looking war machine.

"By Jove," Gareth enthused. "Even I am impressed. The old Ethiops will go wild." He walked along the line of cars, and stopped at the end. "Only three being painted. What about these two?"

"I

explained to you. There are only three runners." lOok, old chap.

Don't let's be too fussy. Slap paint on all of them and I'll put them into the package. We aren't selling with a guarantee, what?"

Gareth smiled brilliantly and winked at Jake. "By the time the complaints come in, you and I will have moved on and no forwarding address." He did not realize that the suggestion was trampling rudely on Jake's craftsman's pride, until he saw the now familiar stiffening of the wide shoulders and the colour coming up Jake's neck.

Half an hour later they were still arguing.

"I've got a reputation on three oceans and across seven seas that I'm not likely to pass up for a couple of pox-ridden old bangers like these," shouted Jake, and he kicked the wheel of one of the condemned vehicles. "Nobody's ever going to say that Jake Barton sold a bum."

Gareth had swiftly gained a working knowledge of his man's temper. He knew instinctively that they were on the very brink of physical violence and quite suddenly he changed his attitude.

"Listen, old chap. There's no point in shouting at each other-2 "I am not shouting-" roared Jake.

"No, of course not, "Gareth soothed him. "I see your point entirely.

Quite right too. I'd feel exactly the same way." Only slightly mollified, Jake opened his mouth to protest further, but before sound passed his lips, Gareth had pressed a long black cheroot between them and lit it.

"Now let's use what brains God gave us, shall we? Tell me why these two won't run and what we need to make them do so." Fifteen minutes later they were sitting under the sun-flap of Jake's old tent, drinking iced Tusker, and under Gareth's skilful soothing the atmosphere was once more one of friendly co-operation.

"A Smith-Bentley carburettor?" Gareth repeated thoughtfully.

"I've tried every possible supplier. The local agent even cabled Cape Town and Nairobi. We'd have to order one from England eight weeks delivery, if we are lucky."

"Look here, old son. I don't mind telling you that this means facing a fate worse than death but for the good of our mutual venture, I'll do it." The Governor of Tanganyika had a daughter who was a spinster of thirty-two years, this despite her father's large fortune and respected title.

Gareth glanced sideways at her and saw all too clearly why this should be. The first adjective which sprang to mind was "horsey', but it was not the correct one, Gareth decided.

"Comely'or'camel-like' would convey a much more accurate description.

A besotted camel, he thought, as he intercepted the adoring gaze which she fixed upon him as she sat sideways upon the luxurious leather seats.

"Jolly good of you to let me take your Pater's bus for a spin, old girl. And she simpered at the endearment, exposing the huge yellowish teeth under the large nose.

A V A "Definitely thinking of buying one myself, when I get home.

Can't beat the old Benters, what?" Gareth swung the long black limousine off the metal led road and it plunged forward smoothly over the dusty rutted track that led northwards along the coast through the palm trees.

An ask ari policeman recognized the fluttering pennant on the front wing, red and blue and gold with rampant lion and unicorn, and he pulled himself to foot-stamping attention and flung a flamboyant salute. Gareth touched the brim of his hat to the manner born, then turned to his companion who had not taken her eyes from his tanned and noble face since they had left the grounds of Government House.

"There is a good view place up ahead, looks out across actually.

Thought we'd park the channel, very beautiful there for a while." She nodded vehemently, unable to trust herself to speak.

Gareth was glad of that she had a squeaky little treble and he smiled his gratitude. That brilliant, completely irresistible smile, and the girl blushed a mottled purple.

She had good eyes, Gareth tried to convince himself, that is if you like camels" eyes. Huge sorrowful pools with long matted lashes.

He would concentrate on the eyes and try and avoid the teeth. He felt a sudden small twinge of concern. "I hope she doesn't bite in the critical moments.

With those choppers, she could inflict a mortal wound." For a moment he considered abandoning the project. Then he made himself imagine a pile of one thousand sovereigns, and his courage returned.

Gareth braked the Bentley and searched for the turnoffs It was well concealed by underbrush and he missed it and had to back up.

Gently he eased the gleaming limousine down into a small clearing, walled in by fern and scrub and roofed over by the cathedral arches of the palms.

"Well, here we are, what?" Gareth pulled on the hand brake and turned to his companion. "Actually you can see the channel if you twist your neck a bit." He leaned forward to demonstrate, and with a convulsive leap the Governor's daughter sprang upon him. Gareth's last controlled thought was that he must avoid the teeth.

Jake Barton waited until the huge glistening Bentley began to heave and toss on its suspension like a lifeboat in a gale, before he rose from the cover of the ferns and, carpet-bag in hand, crept around to the bonnet with its gleaming winged initial V and the stiffly embroidered household pennant.

The noise he made in opening and lifting the engine cowling was effectively smothered by the whinnying cries of passion that issued out

-of the car, and Jake glanced through the windscreen and caught one horrifying glimpse of the Governor's daughter's white limbs, long and shapeless and knobbly kneed as a camel's kicking ecstatically at the roof of the cab before he ducked his head into the engine.

He worked swiftly, his lips pursed but the tune stealthily muted, and his brow creased with concentration as the carburettor jumped and heaved unpredictably under his hands and the whinnies of passion and the high-pitched exhortations to greater effort and speed rang louder.

The resentment he had felt at Gareth Swales's refusal to assist in painting the iron ladies faded swiftly. He was pushing and pulling his full weight now, and his efforts made even the most gruelling manual labour seem insignificant.

As Jake lifted the entire carburettor assembly off the engine block and stowed it into the carpet-bag, there was one last piercing shriek and the Bentley came to an abrupt rest while a ringing silence fell over the palm grove.

Jake Barton crept silently away through the undergrowth leaving his partner stunned and entangled in a mesh of lanky limbs and expensive French underwear.

"I want you to believe that in my weakened condition it was a long walk home. At the same time, I had to try and convince the lady that we were not betrothed."

"We'll get you a citation," Jake promised him, and emerged from the engine housing of the armoured car.

"With disregard for his own personal safety Major Gareth Swales held the pass, stan ned the breach, battered down the gates-" "Terribly amusing," growled Gareth. "But, just like you, I have a reputation to maintain. It would embarrass me in certain circles if this got out, old son. Mum's the word, what?"

"You have my word of honour," Jake told him seriously, and stooped over the crank handle. She fired at the first turn and settled to a steady rhythm to which Jake listened for a few moments before he grinned.

"Listen to her, the bloody little beauty," and he turned to Gareth. "Wasn't it worth it just to hear that sweet burbling song?"

Gareth rolled his eyes in agonized memory and Jake went on. "Four of them. Four lovely, well-behaved ladies. What more could you ask out of life?"

"Five,"said Gareth promptly, and Jake scowled.

"We'd put my name on the fifth one," he wheedled. "I'd sign a statement to protect your reputation." But the expression on Jake's face was sufficient answer.

"No?" Gareth sighed. "I predict that your sentimental, oldfashioned outlook is going to get us both into a lot of trouble."

"We can split up now."

"Wouldn't dream of it, old son. Actually, it would have been dicey peddling a dead one to those Ethiops. They've got these dirty great swords, and it's not only your head that they lop off or so I hear. No, we'll settle for just the four, then." May 22nd the Dunnottar Castle anchored in the Dares Salaam roads and was immediately surrounded by a swarm of barges and lighters. She was the flagship of the Union Castle Line, outward bound from Southampton to Cape Town, Durban, Lourenco Marques, Dares Salaam and Jibuti.

Two suites and ten double cabins of the first class accommodation were taken up by Lij Mikhael Wasan Sagud and his entourage. The Lij was a scion of the royal house of Ethiopia that traced its line back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. He was a trusted member of the Emperor's inner circle and, under his father, the deputy governor of a piece of mountain and desert country in the northern provinces the size of Scotland and Wales combined.

The Ras was returning to his homeland after six months of petitioning the foreign ministers of Great Britain and France, and lobbying in the halls of the League of Nations in Geneva, trying to gather pledges of support for his country in the face of the gathering storm clouds of Fascist Italian aspirations towards an African Empire.

The Lij was a disillusioned man when he disembarked with four of his senior advisers and made the short journey by lighter to where two hired open tourers awaited his arrival on the wharf. Hire of the motor vehicles had been arranged by Major Gareth Swales and the drivers had been given their instructions.

"Now, you leave the talking to me, old chap," Gareth advised Jake, as they waited anxiously in the cavernous and gloomy depths of No. 4 Warehouse. "This really is my part of the show, you know. You just look stern and do the demonstrating. That will impress the old Ethiop no end." Gareth was resplendent in a pale blue tropical suit with a fresh white carnation in the buttonhole, and silk shirt. He wore the diagonally striped old school tie, his hair was brilliantined and carefully brushed, and the sleek lines of the mustache had been trimmed that morning. He ran a judicious eye over his partner and was mildly satisfied. Jake's suit had not been cut in Savile Row, of course, but it was adequate for the occasion, clean and freshly pressed. His shoes had been newly polished and the usually unruly profusion of curls had been wetted and slicked down neatly.

He had scrubbed all traces of grease from his large bony hands and from under his fingernails.

"They probably don't even speak English," Gareth gave his opinion.

"Have to use the old sign language, you know.

Wish you'd let me have that dead one. We could have palmed it off on them. They are bound to be a gullible lot, throw in a handful of beads and a bag of salt-" He was interrupted by the sound of approaching engines.

"This will be them, now. Don't forget what I told you." The two open tourers pulled up in the bright sunlight beyond the doors and disgorged their passengers. Four of them wore the long flowing white shammas, full-length robes like Roman togas draped across the shoulder.

Under the robes they wore black gabardine riding breeches and open sandals. They were all of them elderly men, the dense bushes of their hair shot through with strands of grey and the dark faces wrinkled and lined. In dignified silence they gathered about the taller, younger figure clad in a dark western-style suit and they moved forward into the cool gloom of the warehouse.

Lij Mikhael was well over six feet in height, with a slight scholarly stoop to his shoulders. His skin was the colour of dark honey and his hair and beard were a thick. curly halo about the finely boned face, with dark thoughtful eyes and the narrow nose with its Semitic beak. Despite the stoop, he walked with the grace of a swordsman and his teeth when he smiled were glisteningly white against the dark skin.

"By Jove," said the Lij, in the drawling accent that echoed Gareth's with surprising accuracy. "It is Forty swales isn't it?"

Major Gareth Swales's composure seemed to fall away, leaving him tottering mentally at the use of a nickname he had last heard twenty years before. He had been so branded when his unexpected attack of flatus had clapped and echoed from the vaulted ceiling and stone walls of College Chapel. He had hoped never to hear it spoken again, and now its use took him back to that moment when he had stood in the cold stone chapel and the waves of suppressed laughter had broken over his head like physical blows.

The Prince laughed now, and touched the knot of his necktie. For the first time Jake realized that the diagonal stripes were identical to those that Gareth Swales wore at his own throat.

"Eton 1915 Waynflete's. I was Captain of the House. I gave you six for smoking in the bogs don't you remember?"

"My God," gasped Gareth. "Toffee Sagud. My God. I just don't know what to say."

"Try him with the old sign language, then," murmured Jake helpfully.

"Shut up, damn you," hissed Gareth, and then with a conscious effort he resurrected the smile that lit the gloomy warehouse like the rising of the sun.

"Your Excellency Toffee my dear fellow." He hurried forward with hand outstretched. "What a great and unexpected pleasure." They shook hands laughing, and the solemn dark faces of the elderly advisers lightened with sympathetic merriment.

"Let me introduce my partner, Mr. Jake Barton of Texas.

Mr. Barton is a brilliant engineer and financier Jake, this is His Excellency Lij Mikhael Wasan Sagud, Deputy Governor of Shoo and an old and dear friend of mine." The Prince's hand was narrow-boned, cool and firm. His gaze was quick and penetrating before he turned back to Gareth.

"When were you expelled? Summer of 1915 wasn't it?

Caught boffing one of the maids, as I recall."

"Good Lord, no!"

Gareth was horrified. "Never the hired help. Actually, it was the house master's daughter."

"That's right. I remember now. You were famous went out in a blaze of glory. Talk about your feat lasted for months. They said you went to France with the Duke's, and did jolly well for yourself." Gareth made a deprecating gesture, and Lij Mikhael asked, "Since then what have you been doing, old chap?" Which was a thoroughly embarrassing question for Gareth. He made a few airy gestures with his cheroot.

This and that, you know. One thing and another.

Business, you understand. Importing, exporting, buying and selling."

"Which brings us to the present business, does it not?" the Prince asked gently.

"Indeed, it does," agreed Gareth and took the Prince's arm. "Now that I realize who is buying, it only increases my pleasure in managing to assemble a package of such high quality." The wooden crates were stacked neatly along one wall of the warehouse.

"A .

"Fourteen Vickers machine guns, most of them straight from the factory hardly a shot through the barrels-" They passed slowly down the array of merchandise to where one of the machine guns had been uncrated and set up on its tripod.

"As YOU can see, all first-class stuff." The five Ethiopians were all warriors, from a long warlike line, and they had the true warrior's love of and delight in the weapons of war. They crowded eagerly around the gun.

Gareth winked at Jake, and went on, "One hundred and forty-four Lee-Enfield service rifles, still in the grease-" Half a dozen of the rifles had been cleaned and laid out on display.

No. 4 Warehouse was an Aladdin's Cave for them. The elderly courtiers forgot their dignity, and fell upon the weapons like a flock of crows, cackling in Amharic as they fondled the cold oiled steel.

They hoisted up the skirts of their shammas to crouch behind the demonstration machine gun and traversed it happily, making the staccato schoolboy imitations of automatic fire as they mowed down imaginary hordes of their enemies.

Even Lij Mikhael forsook his Etonian manners and joined in the delighted examination of the hoard, pushing aside an old greybeard of seventy to take his place at the Vickers gun and triggering off a noisy squabble amongst the others in which Gareth diplomatically intervened.

"I say, Toffee, old chap. This isn't all I have for you. Not by a long chalk. I've kept the plums for the last." And Jake helped him to gather up the robed and bearded group of excited old men and herd them gently away from the display of weapons and down the warehouse to the open tourers.

The motorcade, headed by Gareth, Jake and the Prince in the leading tourer, came bumping down the dusty track through the mahogany forest and parked in the clearing in front of the candy-striped marquee that had taken the place of Jake's weather-beaten bell tent.

The Royal Hotel had undertaken to cater for the occasion, despite Jake's protests at the cost.

"Give them a bottle of Tusker each and open a tin of beans," he insisted, but Gareth had shaken his head sadly.

"Just because they are savages doesn't mean that we have to behave like barbarians, old chap. Style. One has to have style that's what life is all about. Style and timing. Fill them up with Charlie and then take them for a stroll down the garden path, what?" Now there were white-robed waiters with red sashes and little red pillbox fezes upon their heads. Under the marquee, long trestle-tables were laden with displays of choice food decorated sucking pig, heaped salvers of boiled scarlet reef lobster, a smoked salmon, imported apples and peaches from the Cape of Good Hope and case upon case, bucket upon bucket of champagne. Although Gareth had been swayed t by Jake's pleas for economy sufficiently to order a Veuve Clicquot not of a selected vintage.

The Prince and his entourage disembarked to a salvo of champagne corks and the elderly courtiers crowed with delight. Quite by chance, Gareth had struck upon the Ethiopians" love of feasting and strong sense of hospitality.

Little that he could have done would have endeared him more to his guests.

"I say, this is very decent of you, my dear Swales" said the Prince. With his innate sense of courtesy, he had not used Gareth's nickname since the first greeting. Gareth was grateful and when the glasses were filled he called for the first toast.

"His Majesty, Negusa Nagast, King of Kings, Emperor Baile Selassie, Lion of Judah." And they drained their glasses, which seemed to be the correct form, so Gareth and Jake imitated them, and then they fell upon the food, giving Gareth a chance to whisper to Jake, "Think up some more toasts we've got to get them filled up." But he needn't have worried for the Prince came in with: "His Britannic Majesty, George V, King of England and Emperor of India." And no sooner were the glasses filled again than he bowed to Jake and lifted his glass.

"The President of the United States of America, Mr. Franklin D.

Roosevelt." Not to be outdone, each of the courtiers shouted an unintelligible toast in Amharic, presumably to the Prince and his father and mother and aunts, uncles and nieces, and the glasses were upended. The waiters rushed back and forth to the steady report of champagne corks.

"The Governor of the British Colony of Tanganyika." Gareth lifted his glass, slurring slightly.

"And the Governor's daughter," Jake murmured sardonically.

This provoked another round of toasts from the robed guests, and then it dawned on Jake and Gareth simultaneously that it was folly to try drinking level with men who had been bred and reared on the fiery tej of Ethiopia.

"How are you feeling?" muttered Gareth anxiously, squinting slightly to focus.

Beautiful, "Jake grinned at him beatifically.

"By God, these fellows know how to pack it away."

"Keep pounding them, Forty. You've got them on the run." With his empty glass he indicated the smiling but sober group of courtiers.

"I'd be grateful if you could refrain from using that name, old chap.

Distasteful, what? Not in the best of style." Gareth slapped his shoulder with bonhomie and almost missed. A look of concern crossed his face. "How do I sound?"

"You sound like I feel. We'd better get out of here before they drink us flat on our backs."

"Oh God, there he goes again," Gareth muttered with alarm as the Prince raised his brimming glass and looked about him expectantly. "Wine with you, my dear Swales," he called as he caught Gareth's eyes.

"Enchanted, I'm sure." Gareth had no choice but to acknowledge and toss off the contents of his glass before hurrying forward to intercept the waiter who darted in to recharge the Prince's empty glass.

"Toffee, old sport, I do want you to see this little surprise I have for you." He grabbed the Prince's drinking arm and prised the glass from his grip. "Come along, everybody. This way, chaps." Among the grey-bearded courtiers there was a decided reluctance to leave the marquee, and Jake had to assist Gareth. Both-of them spreading their arms and making shooing noises, they finally got them moving down the track through the forest which emerged a hundred yards farther on into an open glade the size of a polo field.

A stunned silence fell upon the party as they saw the row of four iron ladies, gleaming in their new coats of grey, with the heavily jacketed water-cooled barrels of the Vickers machine guns protruding from the ports and the rakish turrets emblazoned with the tricolour horizontal bars of the Ethiopian national colours green, yellow and red.

Like sleep-walkers, they allowed themselves to be led to the row of chairs under the umbrellas, and without removing their gaze from the war machines they sank into their seats.

Gareth stood in front of them like a schoolmaster, but swaying slightly.

"Gentlemen, we have here one of the most versatile armoured vehicles ever brought into service by any major military power And while he paused for the Prince to translate, he grinned triumphantly at Jake.

"Start them up, old son." As the first engine burst into life, the elderly courtiers came to their feet and applauded like the crowd at a prize fight.

"Fifteen hundred quid each," whispered Gareth, his eyes sparkling, "they'll go fifteen hundred!" ij Mikhael had invited them to dine in his suite aboard the Dunnottar Castle, and over Jake's Protests a short-order tailor had run up a passable dinner jacket to fit Jake's tall rangy frame.

"I look like I'm in fancy dress, "he objected.

"You look like a duke," Gareth contradicted. "It gives you a bit of style. Style, Jake me lad, always remember. Style! If you look like a tramp, people will treat you as one." Lij Mikhael Sagud wore a magnificently embroidered cloak in gold and scarlet and black, clasped at the throat with a dark red ruby the size of a ripe acorn, tieht-fitting velvet breeches and slippers embroidered with twenty-four carat gold wire. The dinner had been excellent and the Prince seemed in a mellow mood.

"Now, my dear Swales. The prices for the machine guns and the other armaments were decided months ago but the armoured cars were never mentioned. Would you like to suggest a reasonable figure?"

"Your Excellency, I had in mind a fair figure before I realized it was you I was dealing with-" Gareth drew deeply on one of the Prince's Havana cigars, steeling himself for the wild flying chance he was going to take. "Now, of course, I am prepared merely to cover my costs and leave only a modest profit for my partner and myself to share." The Prince showed his appreciation with a gracious gesture.

"Two thousand pounds each," said Gareth quickly, running the words together to make it sound less shocking, but still Jake almost choked on a mouthful of whisky soda.

The Prince nodded thoughtfully. "I see," he said. "That is probably five times the actual value." Gareth looked shocked. "Your Excellency-" But the Prince silenced him with a raised hand.

"During the last six months, I have spent a great deal of time inspecting and pricing various items of military equipment. My dear Swales, please don't insult us both by protesting." There was a long silence and the atmosphere in the cabin was taut as guitar strings then the Prince sighed.

"I could price those weapons but I could not buy. The great powers of the world have denied me that right the right to defend my country against the predator." There was an age of weariness in the dark eyes and smooth brow furrowed with thought. "My country is landlocked, as you know, gentlemen. We do not have access to the sea.

All imports must come through the territories of French and British Somaliland or Italian Eritrea. Italy the predator or the French and the British who have placed us under embargo." Lij Mikhael sipped at the drink in his hand, and then frowned into the depths of the glass, as though it were a crystal ball and he could read the future there.

"The great powers are prepared to deliver us to the Fascist tyrant, with our sword hand empty and trussed behind our back." He sighed again heavily and then looked up at Gareth. His expression changed.

"Major Swales, you have offered me a collection of worn and obsolete vehicles and weapons at many times their actual value. I am a desperate man. I must accept your offer and the price you demand."

Gareth relaxed slightly and glanced at Jake.

"I must even accept your condition that payment be made in British sterling." Gareth smiled now. "My dear fellow-" he began, but again the Prince silenced him with a raised hand.

"In turn I impose only one condition. It is vital to my acceptance of your offer. You and your partner, Mr. Barton, will be responsible for the delivery of all these weapons into the territory of Ethiopia. Payment will be made only when you hand over the shipment to me or my agent within the borders of his Imperial Majesty, hail Selassie."

"Good God, man," exploded Gareth. "that involves smuggling them through hundreds of miles of hostile territory. That's ridiculous!"

"Ridiculous, Major Swales? I think not. Your merchandise is of no value to me or to you in Dares Salaam. I am your only customer nobody else in the entire world would be foolish enough to buy it from you. On the other hand, any attempt that I should make to import it into my homeland would certainly be frustrated. I am being watched carefully by agents of all the major powers. I know I shall be searched the moment that I land at Jibuti. Lying here, the merchandise has no value." He" paused and glanced from Gareth to Jake. Jake rubbed his jaw thoughtfully.

"I see your point, Your Excellency."

"You are a reasonable man, Mr.

Barton," said the Prince, and then returned his attention to Gareth, and repeated his last statement. "Lying here it has no value. In Ethiopia, it is worth fifteen thousand British sovereigns to you. The choice is yours. Abandon it or get it into Ethiopia."

"I am appalled," said Gareth solemnly, as he paced back and forth.

"I mean, after all the fellow is an old Etonian.

God, I can hardly believe that he would welsh on our agreement.

It's absolutely frightful. I mean, I trusted him." Jake was sprawled on the couch in Madame Cecile's private room. He had shed his dinner-jacket, and perched on his knee there was a plump young lady with a cap of brassy blonde hair. She was dressed in a flimsy daffodil coloured dress, the skirts of which had pulled up to show bright blue garters around her ripe thighs. Jake was weighing one of her ample breasts in his hand with all the concentration of a housewife choosing tomatoes from a greengrocers tray. The girl giggled and wriggled provocatively into his lap.

"Damn it, Jake, listen to me. "I am listening," said Jake.

"The man was positively insulting," protested Gareth, and then seemed for a moment to lose his concentration as Jake's companion unbuttoned the bodice of her wispy dress.

"By Jove, Jake, they are rather delicious, what?" and they both regarded the display with interest.

"You've got your own, "Jake muttered.

"You're right," agreed Gareth, and turned to the junoesque female who waited patiently for him on the other couch.

Her glossy black hair was piled upon her head in an elaborate nest of curls and plaits, and she had large, intense, toffee-coloured eyes in a face whose paleness was emphasized by the vividly painted crimson lips.

She pouted at Gareth, and draped one arm languidly around his shoulders.

"Are you sure neither of them understands English?" Gareth called, as he entered into the practised embrace of the white arms.

"Portuguese, both of them," Jake assured him. "But you'd better test them."

"Very well." Gareth thought a moment. "Girls, I must warn you that we aren't paying for your company not a penny. This is for love alone."

Neither of their expressions changed, and the enfolding movements of sinuous limbs continued without pause.

"That settles it," Gareth opined. "We can talk."

"At a time like this?"

"We've only got until morning to decide what we are going to do." Jake made a muffled remark and Gareth admonished him, "I can't hear a word."

"That gullible old Ethiop of yours has us over a barrel" repeated Jake with sardonic relish. Before he could reply, vivid lips, pouting and red as ripened fruit, closed over Gareth's. There was silence for a while until Gareth wrested himself loose and his head popped up mustache in disarray and stained with lipstick.

"Jake, what the hell are we going to do?" And Jake told him in nautical language which left no room for misunderstanding precisely what he was about to do.

"don't mean that, I mean what are we going to tell old Toffee tomorrow?

Are we going to deliver the goods?" Gareth's companion reached up, took him in a head lock and drew his mouth down again.

"Jake, for God's sake, concentrate on the problem," he pleaded as he was engulfed.

"I am, I am!" Jake assured him, rolling his eyes sideways to meet Gareth's, but without interrupting his efforts with the plump blonde.

"How the hell do we get four armoured cars ashore on a hostile coast, just for a start then how do we run them two hundred miles to the Ethiopian border?" Gareth lamented, speaking out of the unemployed corner of his mouth, and then something caught his attention. He pulled free and raised himself on one elbow. "I say, your companion isn't a blonde after all. Extraordinary." Jake glanced sideways and grinned.

"And yours seems to be Scottish she's wearing a sporran, by God."

"Jake, we've got to make a decision. Do we go or don't we?"

"Action first, decisions later. Let's engage the targets."

"Right," Gareth agreed, realizing the futility of discussion at this moment. "Driver advance."

"Gunner. Traverse right. Steady. On. Independent rapid fire."

"Shoot!" cried Gareth, and the conversation languished.

It was half an hour before it was resumed, with the two of them in shirt sleeves, braces dangling and black ties discarded, poring over a large-scale map of the East African coast that Madame Cecile had produced.

"There's a thousand miles of unguarded coast line." Gareth traced the great horn of Africa in the light of the Petromax lamp and then ran his finger inland. "And this is marked as semi-desert all the way to the border. We aren't likely to run into a crowd."

"It's a hell of a way to make a living, "said Jake.

"Are we going then?" Gareth looked up.

"You know we are."

"Yes," Gareth laughed. "I know we are.

Fifteen thousand sovereigns say we have to." ij Mikhael received their decision with a curt nod and then asked, "Have you planned yet how you will accomplish this task? Perhaps I can be of assistance, I know the coast well and most of the routes to the interior." He gestured for one of his advisers to spread a map upon the stateroom table. Jake ran his finger across it, as he spoke.

"We thought to hire a shallowdraughted vessel here in Dares Salaam, and make a landing somewhere in this area.

Then to load the cases on the cars, and, carrying our own fuel, run directly inland to some prearranged rendezvous with your people."

"Yes," agreed the Prince. "The basic idea is right. But I should avoid British territory. They maintain a very intensive patrol system to discourage the export of slaves from their territory to the East.

No, keep clear of British Somaliland. The French territory is more suitable." They plunged into the planning of the expedition, both Jake and Gareth realizing swiftly how lightly they had discounted the difficulties that faced them, and how valuable was the Prince's advice.

"Your landing will be one of the critical stages. There is a tidal fall of almost twenty feet on this coast and an unfavorable shelving of the bottom. However, at this point about forty miles north of Jibuti there is an ancient harbour called Month. It's not marked on the chart. It was one of the centres of the slave trade before its abolition, like Zanzibar and Mozambique Island. It was stormed and sacked by a British force in 1842. The port is without fresh water and since then it has been deserted. Yet it has a deep-water channel and a good approach to the shore. This would be a suitable place to land the vehicles an awkward task without good wharfage and overhead cranes."

Gareth was scribbling notes on a sheet of Union Castle notepaper, while Jake leaned attentively over the chart.

"What about patrols in this area?" he asked, and the Prince shrugged.

"There is a battalion of the Ugion ttrang&e at Jibuti and they send an occasional camel patrol through this area.

The odds are much against an encounter."

"Those are the kind of odds I like," muttered Gareth.

"Once we are ashore what then?" The Prince touched the map.

"You should then move parallel with the border of Italian Eritrea - a southwesterly heading until you encounter the swamp area where the Awash River sinks into the desert. Then turn directly westwards and you will cross the French Somali border and enter the Danakil country of Ethiopia. I will arrange to meet your column here-" He turned to his group of elderly advisers and asked a question. Immediately an animated and high-volume discussion broke out, at the end of which the Prince turned back to them with a smile.

"We seem to be in general agreement that the rendezvous should be at the Wells of Chaldi here." He showed them the map again. "As you can see, it is well within Ethiopian territory. This will suit my Government as well for the cars will be used in the defence of the Sardi Gorge and the road to Dessie in the event of an Italian offensive in that direction-" The Prince was interrupted by one of his advisers and he listened for a few minutes before nodding in agreement and turning back to the two white men. "It has been suggested that as your journey from Month to the Wells of Chaldi will be through trackless desert country some areas of which would be impassable to wheeled vehicles we should provide you with a guide who knows the area-" "That's more like it, "Jake growled with relief.

"That's absolutely splendid, Toffee," agreed Gareth.

"Very well. The young man I have chosen is a relative of mine, a nephew. He speaks English well, having also spent three years at school in England, and he knows the area through which you will be travelling, as he has often hunted the lion there as a guest of a chief in French territory." He spoke to one of the advisers in Amharic, and the man nodded and left the cabin. "I have sent for him now. His name is Gregorius Maryam." When he came, Gregorius was a young man probably in his early twenties. However, he was almost as tall as his uncle with the warrior's fierce dark eyes and eagle features but his skin was smooth and hairless as a girl's, the colour of pale honey. He also was dressed in Western European fashion, and his expression was intense and intelligent.

His uncle spoke to him quietly in Amharic and he nodded, then turned to meet Jake and Gareth.

"My uncle has explained what is required of me and I am honoured to be of service." Gregorius's voice was clear and eager.

"Can you drive a motor car?" Jake asked unexpectedly, and Gregorius smiled and nodded.

"Indeed, sir. I have my own Morgan sports car in Addis Ababa."

"That's great." Jake returned the smile. "But you'll find an armoured car a rougher ride."

"Gregorius will pack what he needs for the journey, and join you immediately. As you know, this ship sails at noon," observed the Prince, and the young Ethiopian nobleman bowed to his uncle and left the cabin.

"You now owe me a favour, Major Swales, and I request repayment immediately." Lij Mikhael turned back to Gareth, whose complacency evaporated immediately, to be replaced by an expression of mild alarm.

Gareth had developed a healthy respect for the Prince's ability to drive a bargain.

"Now listen here, old chap-" he began to protest, but the Prince went on as though there had been no interruption.

"One of the few weapons that my country has to exploit is the conscience of the civilized world-" "I wouldn't give you much change for that," observed Jake.

"No," agreed the Prince sadly. "Not a very effective weapon as yet.

But if we can only inform the world of the injustices and unprovoked aggression which we suffer then we can force the democratic nations to come to our support.

We need popular support we must reach the people. If the common peoples are informed of our lot, they will force their own governments to take action."

"It's a pretty thought," Gareth agreed.

"Travelling with me now is one of the most highly thought of and influential journalists in America. Someone who has the ear of hundreds of thousands of readers across the United States of America, and the rest of the English-speaking world as well. A person of liberal conscience, a champion of the oppressed." The Prince paused.

"However, this person's reputation has preceded us. The Italians realize that their case might be damaged if the truth is written by a journalist of this calibre and they have taken measures to prevent this happening.

We have today heard by radio that transit of English, French and Italian territories will be refused, and' that this ally of ours will be denied access to Ethiopia. They do not only embargo weapons but they prevent our friends from giving us succour."

"No," said Gareth. "I've got enough trouble that I must act as a taxi service for the entire press corps of the world.

I'll be damned if I will-" "Can he drive a motor car? "Jake interrupted "We are still short of a driver for the last car."

"If I know journalists, all he can drive is a whisky bottle," grunted Gareth gloomily.

"If he can drive we'd save the wages of hiring another driver," Jake pointed out, and Gareth's gloom lightened a little.

"That's true if he can drive."

"Let us find out," suggested the Prince, and spoke quietly to one of his men who slipped out of the cabin. Gareth took advantage of the pause to take the Prince's arm and draw him aside from the main group.

"I have drawn up an estimate of the additional expenses we will encounter the hire of a ship and that sort of thing it stretches the old finances. I wonder if you could see your way clear to making a gesture of good faith just a small advance. A few hundred guineas."

"Major Swales, I have made the gesture already by giving my nephew into your care."

"Not that I don't appreciate that-" Gareth was about to enlarge his argument, but he was prevented from doing so by the opening of the cabin door and the entry of the journalist. Gareth Swales straightened up and touched the knot of his tie. His smile broke across the cabin like the early morning sun.

Jake Barton had slumped down into one of the chairs beside the chart table and was about to light a cheroot, the match flaring in the cup of his hands, but he did not complete the movement. The match burned on forgotten, as he stared at the newcomer.

"Gentlemen," said the Prince. "I have the honour to introduce Miss Victoria Camberwell, a distinguished member of the American press and a good friend of my country." Vicky Camberwell was not yet thirty years of age, and she was also an unusually attractive and nubile young woman. She had learned long ago that youth and feminine beauty were not assets in her chosen career and she tried, with little success, to disguise both.

She adopted a severe, almost mannish, dress. A military-style shirt with cloth epaulets and button-down breast pockets that were pushed out by the large but shapely breasts. Her skirt was tailored in the same cream linen with more button down pockets on the thighs, and clasped at the slim waist with a leather belt and heavy snake's buckle.

Her shoes were of the lace-up type that women call "sensible."

On her long lovely legs they looked almost frivolous.

Her hair was drawn severely back to expose a long swan neck. The hair was fine and silken, sun-bleached, in places, almost white and shaded over her high broad forehead to the colour of wheat and autumn leaves.

Gareth recovered first. "Miss Camberwell, of course. I know your work. Your column is syndicated in the Observer." She looked at him without expression, remarkably immune to the celebrated Swales smile.

Her eyes, he noticed, were serious and level, sage green in colour, but shot with speckles of tawny gold.

Jake's match burned his fingers and he swore. She turned to him and he stood up quickly.

"I didn't expect a woman."

"You don't like women?" Her voice was pitched low and had a husky tone that raised goose bumps on Jake's forearms.

"Some of my favourite people are women." He saw that she was tall, reaching almost to his shoulder, and that her body had a poised athletic carriage. She held her head at a haughty angle which emphasized the strong independent line of mouth and jaw.

"In fact, I can't think of anyone I like more." And she smiled for the first time. It had surprising warmth, and Jake saw that her front teeth were slightly uneven one pushed out of line with the other. He stared at it fascinated for a moment, then he looked up into the appraising green eyes.

"Do you drive a car?" he asked seriously, and her smile turned to surprised laughter.

"I do." said Vicky, laughing. "I also ride a horse and a bicycle, I can ski, pilot an aeroplane, play snooker and bridge, sing, dance and play the piano."

"That will do," Jake laughed with her. "That will do just fine." Vicky turned back to the Prince. "What is all this about, Lij Mikhael?" she asked. "Just what do these two gentlemen have to do with our plans?" The towering purple hull of the Dunnottar Castle swung slowly across the back-drop of palm trees and the high sun-gilded ranges of cumulus cloud, as she pulled her anchors and came around for the harbour entrance.

At the rail of the upper deck, the tall figure of the Prince was flanked by the white-robed figures of his staff, and as the ship increased speed and kicked up a white sparkling bow wave, he lifted an arm in a gesture of farewell.

Swiftly, the shape of the liner dwindled away into the limitless eastern ocean as she made her offing before turning northwards once more.

The four figures on the wharf lingered after it had disappeared, staring out at the horizon whose long sweep was uninterrupted except by the tiny white triangular sails of the fishing fleet coming in off the banks.

Jake spoke first. "We'll have to find digs for Miss Camberwell. And at the thought, both he and Gareth made a grab for her single battered portmanteau and the typewriter in its leather case.

"Spin you for it," suggested Gareth, and an East African shilling appeared in his hand.

"Tails,"decided Jake.

"Rough luck, old son," Gareth commiserated, and returned the coin to his pocket. "I'll take care of Miss Camberwell-" he went on, " then I'll start looking for a ship to take us up coast. In the meantime, I suggest you have another look at those cars." As he spoke, he hailed a ricksha from the row which waited at the head of the wharf.

"Remember, Jake, it was one thing driving them down to the harbour but an altogether different matter driving them through two hundred miles of desert. You'd best make sure we don't have to walk home, he advised, and handed Vicky Camberwell into the ricksha. "Driver, advance!" he called, and with a cheery wave they jogged away up town.

"It looks as though we are on our own, sir," said Gregorius, and Jake grunted, still staring after the departing ricksha. "I think I should also find accommodation," and Jake roused himself.

"Come along, lad. You can doss down in my tent for the few days before we leave." And then he grinned. "I hope you won't be offended if I wish it was Miss Camberwell rather than you, Greg." The boy laughed delightedly. "I understand your feelings but perhaps she snores, sir."

"No girl who looks like that could possibly snore," Jake told him. "And another thing don't call me "sir", it makes me nervous. My name's Jake." He picked up one of Greg's bags. "We'll walk," he said. "I have a horrible hollow feeling that it's going to be a long weary wait until next the eagle screams." They set off along the dusty unpaved verge of the road.

"You said you own a Morgan? "Jake asked.

"That's right, Jake." you know what makes it move?"

"The internal combustion engine."

"Oh brother," applauded Jake. "That is a flying start. You have just been appointed second engineer get your sleeves rolled up." Gareth Swales had a theory about seduction which in twenty years he had never had reason to revise. ladies liked the company of aristocrats, they were all of them basically snobs and a coat of arms usually made the coldest of them swoon. No sooner had they settled into the padded seats of the ricksha, than he turned upon Vicky Camberwell the full dazzling beam of his wit and charm.

No one who had built up an international reputation in the hard field of journalism by the age of twenty-nine could be expected to lack perception, or be naive in the wicked ways of the world. Vicky Camberwell had made a preliminary judgement of Gareth within minutes of meeting him.

She had known others with the same urbane good looks and meticulous grooming, the light bantering tone and the steely glint in the eye.

Rogue, she had decided and every second in his company confirmed the initial judgement but damned good-looking rogue, and very funny rogue with the exaggerated accent and turn of speech which she had recognized immediately as a huge put-on. She listened with amusement as he set out to impress with his lineage.

"As the colonel used to say we always referred to my old man as the colonel." Gareth's father had indeed died a colonel, but not in an illustrious regiment, as the rank suggested. He had worked his way up from the lowly rank of constable in the Indian police.

"Of course, the family estates were from my mother's side-" His mother. had been the only daughter of an unsuccessful baker, and the family estate had comprised the mortgaged premises in Swansea.

"The colonel was always a bit of a rogue, and moved with a wild crowd, you know. Fast ladies and slow horses. The estates went to the block, I'm afraid." Victims themselves of the grinding injustices of the British class system, mother and father had devoted themselves to lifting their only son beyond that invisible barrier that divides the middle from the upper classes.

"Of course, I was at Eton and he was mostly on foreign service.

Wish I'd got to know the old devil better. He must have been a wonderful character-" Entrance to the school had been assisted by the Commissioner of Police, himself an old Etonian. The mother's small inheritance and the greater part of the father's salary went into the costly business of turning the son into a gentleman.

"Killed in a duel, would you believe it. Pistols at dawn.

He was a romantic, too much fire in his veins." When the cholera took the mother, the father's salary was insufficient to meet the bills that a young man casually ran up when he mixed sociably with the sons of dukes. In India, bribery was a convention, a way of living but the colonel was found out. It was indeed pistols at dawn. The colonel rode out into the dark Indian forest with his Webley service pistol, and his bay mare trotted back to the stables an hour later with an empty saddle and the reins trailing.

"Had to leave Eton, naturally." Under considerable duress.

It was coincidence that Gareth's friendship with the house master's daughter took place at the same time as the colonel's last ride, but at least it allowed Gareth to leave in a blaze of glory, as Lij Mikhael remarked, rather than as a nobody whose fees had not been met.

He went out into the world with the speech, the manners and the tastes of a gentleman but without the means to support them.

"Luckily they were having this war at the time " and even a regiment like the Duke's were not enquiring too deeply into the private means of their new officers. Eton was sufficient recommendation, and, with the help of the German machine guns, promotion was swift.

However, after the armistice, things were back to normal and it required three thousand a year for an officer to support himself in the style the regiment expected. Gareth moved on, and had kept moving ever since.

Vicky Camberwell listened to him, fascinated despite herself She knew that this was the cobra dance before the chicken, she knew herself well enough to realize that part of the attraction he held for her was the very devilry and roguishness she had so readily recognized.

There had been others like this one. Her job took her to the trouble spots of the world, and men of this breed were attracted to the same hot spots. With these men there was always the excitement and danger, the thrill and the fun but inevitably there was also the sting and the pain in the end.

She tried not to respond, wishing the ride would end, but Gareth's sallies were too much for her and as the ricksha drew up in front of the Royal Hotel entrance, she could not resist the almost suffocating urge to laugh. She threw back her head, shaking her shining pale hair in the wind as she let it ring out.

Gareth had learned also to use the calibre of a woman's laughter as a yardstick. Vicky laughed with an unaffected gaiety, a straightforward physical response that he found reassuring, and he took her arm possessively as he helped her out of the ricksha.

He showed her through the royal suite with a proprietorial air.

"Only one suite in the place. Balcony looks out over the gardens, and you get the sea breeze in the evening." And, "Only private loo in the building, even one of those French jobs for sluicing the old privates, you know." And, "The bed is quite extraordinary, like sleeping on a cloud and all that rot. Never experienced anything like it."

"Is this where I am to stay?" Vicky asked, with a small-girl innocence.

"Well, I thought we could make some sort of arrangement, old girl." And she was left with no doubts as to the type of arrangement Gareth Swales had in mind.

"You are very kind, major," she murmured, and crossed to the handset of the telephone.

"This is Miss Camberwell. Major Swales is vacating the royal suite for me. Please have a servant move his clothes to alternative accommodation."

"I say-" gasped Gareth, and she covered the mouthpiece and smiled at him. "It's so sweet of you." Then she listened to the manager's voice. "Oh dear," she said. "Well, if that's the only room you have vacant, it will just have to do then, I am sure the major has experienced more uncomfortable billets." When Gareth saw the room that was now his, he tried honestly to remember humbler and less comfortable billets.

The Chinese prison in Mukden had been cooler and not placed directly over the boisterous uproar of the public bar, and the front line dugout during the winter of 1917 at Arras had been more spacious and better furnished.

The next three days Gareth Swales spent at the harbour, drinking tea and whisky in the office of the harbour master, riding out with the pilot to meet every new vessel as it crossed the bar, jogging in a ricksha along the wharf to speak with the skippers of dhows and Tuggers, rusty old coal-burners and neater, newer oil, burners, or rowing about the harbour in a hired ferry to hail the vessels that lay at anchor in the roads.

His evenings he spent plying Victoria Camberwell with charm, flattery and vintage champagne for all of which she seemed to have an insatiable appetite and complete immunity. She listened to him, laughed with him and drank his champagne, and at midnight excused herself prettily, and nimbly side-stepped his efforts to press her to his snowy shirt-front or get a foot in the door of the royal suite.

By the morning of the fourth day, Gareth was understandably becoming a little discouraged. He thought of taking a bucket of Tusker out to Jake's camp and cheering himself up with a little of the American's genial company.

However, he did not relish having to admit failure to Jake, SO he fought off the temptation and took his usual ricksha ride down to the harbour.

During the night a new vessel had anchored in the outer roads and Gareth examined her through his binoculars. She was salt-fir ned and dirty, (Id and scarred with a dark nondescript hull and a ragged crew, but Gareth saw that her rigging was sound and that although she was schooner rigged with masts which could spread a mass of canvas, yet she had propeller drive at the stern probably she had been converted to take a diesel engine under the high poop. She looked the most likely prospect he had yet seen in the harbour and Gareth ran down the steps to the ferry and exuberantly tipped the oarsman a shilling over his usual fare.

At closer range the vessel seemed even more disreputable than she had at a distance. The paintwork proved to be a mottled patchwork of layer peeling from layer, and it was clear what the sanitary arrangements were aboard. The sides were zebra-striped with human excrement.

Yet closer still, Gareth noticed that the planking was tight and sound beneath the execrable paint cover, and her bottom, seen through the clear water, was clean copper and free of the usual fuzzy green beard of weed. Also her rigging was well set up and all sheets had the bright yellow colour and resilient took of new hemp. The name on her stern was in Arabic and French, HirondeUe, and she was Seychelles registered.

Gareth wondered at her purpose, for she was certainly a ringer, a thoroughbred masquerading as a cart horse. That big bronze propeller would drive her handily, and the hull itself looked fast and sea-kindly.

Then as he came alongside he smelled her, and knew precisely what she was. He had smelled that peculiar odour of polluted bilges and suffering humanity before in the China Sea. He had heard it said that it was an odour that could never be scoured from a hull, not even sheep dip and boiling salt water would cleanse it. They said that on a dark night, the patrol boats could smell a slaver from over the horizon.

A man who made his daily bread buying and selling slaves would be unlikely to baulk at a mere trifle like gun running decided Gareth, and hailed her.

"Ahoy, HirondeLle!" The response was hostile, the closed dark faces of the ragged crew stared down at the ferry. They were a mixed batch, Arab, Indian, Chinese, Negro and there was no answer to his hail.

Standing in the ferry, Gareth cupped his hands to his mouth and, with the Englishman's unconscious arrogance that assumes all the world speaks English, called again.

"I want to speak to your captain." Now there was a stir under the poop and a white man came to the rail. He was swarthy, darkly sunburned and so short that his head barely showed above the gunwale.

"What you want? You police, hey?" Gareth guessed he was Greek or Armenian. he wore a dark patch over one eye, and the effect was theatrical. The good eye was bright and stony as water-washed agate.

"No police!" Gareth assured him. "No trouble," and produced the whisky bottle from his coat pocket and waved it airily.

The Captain leaned out over the rail and peered closely at Gareth.

Perhaps he recognized the twinkle in the eye and the jaunty piratical smile that Gareth flashed up at him. It often takes one to know one.

Anyway, he seemed to reach a decision and he snapped an order in Arabic. A rope ladder tumbled down the side.

"Come," invited the Captain. He had nothing to hide.

On this leg of his voyage he carried only a cargo of baled cotton goods from Bombay. He would discharge this here at Dares Salaam before continuing northwards to make a nocturnal landfall on the great horn of Africa, there to take on his more lucrative cargo of human wares.

As long as the merchants of Arabia, India and the East still offered huge sums for the slender black girls of the Danakil and Galla, men like this would brave the British warships and patrol boats to supply them.

"I thought we might drink a little whisky together and talk about money," Gareth greeted the Captain. "My name is Swales. Major Swales." The Captain had trained his oiled black hair into a queue that hung down his back. He seemed to cultivate the buccaneer image.

"My name is Papadopoulos." He grinned for the first time.

"And the talk of money is sweet like music." He held out his hand.

Gareth and Vicky Camberwell came to Jake's camp in the mahogany forest, bearing gifts.

"This is a surprise," Jake greeted them sardonically as he straightened up from the welding set with the torch still flaring in his hand. "I thought you two had eloped."

"Business first, pleasure later." Gareth handed Vicky down from the ricksha. "No, my dear Jake, we have been working hard." J can see that. You look really worn out with your labours." Jake doused the welding torch and accepted the bucket of Tusker beer. He broached two bottles -immediately, handing one to Greg and lifting the other to his own lips. He wore only a pair of greasy khaki shorts.

When he lowered it, he grinned. "But, what the hell, I was dying of thirst and so I forgive you."

"You have saved our lives, Major Swales and Miss Camberwell," agreed Greg, and saluted them with the de wed bottle.

"What on earth is this?" Gareth turned to inspect the massive construction on which Jake and Greg had been working, and Jake patted it proudly.

"It's a raft." He circled the complicated platform of empty oil drums with its decking of timber slats, indicating its finer features with the half-empty beer bottle.

"Armoured cars don't swim, and we have to land them on a shelving beach. It's unlikely we will be able to get within a hundred yards of the shore. We'll float them off." Vicky was looking at the fine muscling of Jake's shoulders and arms, at the flat belly and the dark pelt of hair that covered his chest, but Gareth was fascinated by the crudely constructed raft.

"I was going to talk to you about landing the cars, and suggest something like this," Gareth said, and Jake lifted an eyebrow at him in disbelief.

"All we must make sure of is that the vessel that lands us has a derrick strong enough to swing the cars outboard."

"What do they weigh?"

"Five tons each."

"Fine, the HirondeUe can handle that."

"The Hirondelle?"

"The vessel that's transporting us."

"So you have been working."

Jake laughed. "I would never have believed it of you. When do we sail?"

"Dawn, the day after tomorrow. We will load during the night not wanting to advertise our cargo and we will sail at first light."

"That doesn't give me much time to teach Miss Camberwell to drive one of the cars." Jake turned to her now, and once again felt the thrill of looking into those speckled eyes of green and gold. "I'm going to need a deal of your time."

"That's one thing I've got plenty of at the moment." For Vicky the interlude in Dares Salaam had served to rest her tired and strained nerves. her previous assignment at Geneva had been irksome and wearying. She had spent the last few days exploring the ancient port and writing a two-thousand-word filler on its origins and history. She had enjoyed Gareth Swales's attentions and the by-play of avoiding his more serious advances. Now she was becoming aware of Jake Barton's smouldering admiration. Nothing like being pursued by two tough, dangerous and forceful males to relax a girl, she thought, and smiled at Jake, enjoying his reaction, and watching Gareth Swales bridle and move in to intervene.

"I can give Vicky a bit of instruction on the jolly old machines, don't want to take you off important work." Vicky did not turn her head, but went on smiling at Jake.

"I think that's rather Mr. Barton's department," she said.

"Jake," said Jake.

"Vicky," said Vicky.

This whole business was turning out very well indeed. A good story to chase, a worthy cause to support, another daring escapade to add to the blooming lustre of her reputation. She knew none of her colleagues had dared the League's sanctions and violated international frontiers with a gang of gun-runners to file a story.

As a bonus, there were two attractive males for company, It all looked very good indeed, just as long as she kept it all on a manageable basis, and did not let her emotions get into an uproar once more.

They followed the path down through the mahogany forest, and she smiled secretly to herself as she watched Gareth and Jake jockeying for position beside her. However, when they reached the clearing, Gareth stopped abruptly.

"What now? "he demanded.

"The paint job is Greg's idea," explained Jake. "Make people think twice before they start shooting at us." The four vehicles were now painted a glistening snowy white, and the turrets were emblazoned with a flaming scarlet cross. "if the French or the Italians try to stop us, we are a unit of armoured ambulances of the International Red Cross.

You, Greg and I are doctors, and Vicky is a nursing sister."

"My God, you have been busy." Vicky was impressed.

"Also the white paint will be cooler in the desert," Greg explained seriously. "They call it the "Great Burn" with good reason."

"The carrying racks I designed," said Jake. "Each vehicle will be able to carry two forty-gallon drums of gasoline and one of water at the rear of the turret. The crates of arms and ammunition we will distribute between the four of them and rope them down here across the sponsons, - I have welded cleats here to take the ropes."

"The crates will be a dead giveaway," objected Gareth.

"They are all marked-" "We'll plane off the marking and re-label them as medical supplies, "Jake told him, then took Vicky's arm. "I've chosen this one for you.

She's the most docile and friendly of the four."

"Do they have characters of their own?" Vicky teased him, and laughed at the seriousness of his reply.

"They are just like women. My iron ladies," he slapped the nearest machine. "This one is an absolute darling except that her rear suspension is slightly out of alignment, so she waggles her bottom a bit at speed. It's nothing serious, however, but it's why her name is Miss Wobbly. She's yours.

You'll grow to love her. "Jake walked on and kicked the tyre of the next car. "This one is the bitch of the party. She tried to break my wrist the very first time I ever cranked her. She is known as Priscilla the Pig. I'm the only one who can handle her. She doesn't love me, but she respects me." He moved on. "Greg has chosen this one and called her Tenastelin which means "God is with us" - I hope he is right, but I doubt it. Greg is a bit funny about that sort of thing.

He tells me he was going to be a priest once." He winked at the youngster. "Gareth, this one is yours she has a brand new carburettor.

I think it is only fair you should enjoy her, since you are the one who risked all to obtain it."

"Oh?" Vicky's eyes lit with interest, the news-hound in her aroused.

"What happened?"

"It's a long story," Jake grinned, "but it involved a long and dangerous ride on a camel. "Gareth choked on a lungful of cheroot smoke and coughed, but Jake went on remorselessly, "She shall therefore be known in future as Henrietta the Hump the Hump for short."

"How very cute," said Vicky.

After midnight the four vehicles moved in column through the dark and sleeping streets of the old town. The steel shutters were closed down over the headlights so that only a narrow strip of light was thrown forwards and downwards. The engines were idling as they moved at walking speed under the trees whose spread branches hung over the road and hid the stars.

The cars were heavily loaded. the burden that each of them carried were drums and crate st coils of rope and netting, trenching tools and camping equipment.

Gareth Swales led the column, freshly shaven and dressed in grey flannel Oxford bags and a white jersey with the I Zingari cricket colours adorning the neck and cuffs. He was mildly concerned that the proprietor of the Royal Hotel might become aware of his imminent departure, for there was a bill for three weeks" board outstanding and a formidable pile of unpaid chit ties signed with the Swales flourish for champagne supplied. Gareth would definitely feel happier out at sea.

Gregorius Maryam followed him closely. His hereditary title was Gerazinach, "Commander of the Left Wing', and his warrior blood coursed through his veins mingling with the deeply religious Old Testament teachings of the Coptic Christian Church, so that his eyes shone with an almost mystic fanaticism and his heart soared with a young man's fierce patriotism, for he was still young enough and inexperienced enough to look on the dirty bloody business of war as something glamorous and manly.

Behind him came Vicky Camberwell, driving Miss Wobbly with competence and precision. Jake was delighted with her ability to judge the engine beat, and to mesh the ancient gears with a light touch on clutch and stick. She too was excited by the prospect of adventure, and new experience. That afternoon she had filed her preliminary report

, despatching five thousand words by the new airmail service that would deposit them on her editor's desk in New York within ten days.

She had explained the background, the clear intent of Benito Mussolini to annex the sovereign territories of Ethiopia, the world's indifference, the arms embargo. "Do not delude yourselves" she had written, "into the belief that I am crying wolf. The wolf of Rome is already hunting.

What is about to happen in the mountains of northern Africa will shame the civilized world." And then she had gone on to expose the intention of the great nations to prevent her reaching the embattled empire and reporting its plight. She had ended the despatch, "Your correspondent has rejected this restriction placed upon her movements and her integrity. Tonight I have joined a group of intrepid men who are risking their lives to defy the embargo, and to carry through the closed territories a quantity of arms and supplies desperately needed by the beleaguered nation. By the time you read this, we shall have failed and have died upon the desert coast of Africa, which the natives fearfully call the "Great Burn" or we shall have succeeded. We shall have landed by night from a small coasting vessel and trekked through hundreds of miles of savage and hostile territory to a meeting with an Ethiopian prince. I hope that in my next despatch, I shall be able to describe our journey to you, but if the gods of chance decree otherwise at least we shall have tried." Vicky was very pleased with the first article. In her usual flamboyant style, she particularly liked the "trekking" bit which gave a touch of local colour. It had everything: drama, mystery, the little guy taking on the big.

She knew that the completed series would be a giant and she was excited and aglow with anticipation.

Behind her Jake Barton followed. He listened with half his attention to the engine beat of the Pig. For no apparent reason, except perhaps a premonition of what awaited her, the car had that night refused to start. Jake had cranked her until his arm was cramped and aching. He had blown through the fuel system, checked the plugs, magneto and every other moving part that could possibly be at fault.

Then, after another hour of tinkering, she had started and run sweetly, without giving the slightest hint of what had prevented her doing so earlier.

With the other half of his attention, he was mentally in the mountains checking out his preparations knowing that this was his last chance to fill any gaps in his list. It was one hell of a long trail from Month to the Wells of Chaldi and not many service stations on the road. The pontoon raft of drums had been stowed aboard the HirondeUe that afternoon, and each car carried its own means of sustenance and survival a load which taxed their ancient suspensions and body work Thus Jake's conscious mind was fully occupied, but below that level was a gut memory that tightened his nerves and charged his blood with adrenaline There had been another night like this, moving in column in the darkness, with the throttled-back engine beat drumming softly in his ears but then there had been the glow of star shell in the sky ahead, the distant juddering of a Maxim firing at a gap in the wire and the smell of death and mud in his nostrils. Unlike Gregorius Maryam in the car ahead, Jake Barton knew about war and all its glories.

apadopoulos was waiting for them on the wharf, carrying a hurricane lamp and dressed in an ankle, length greatcoat that gave him the air of a down-at, heel gnome. He signalled the column forward, waving the lamp, and his ragged crew swarmed off the deck of the Hirondelle on to the stone wharf.

It was clear that they were accustomed to loading unusual cargo in the middle of the night. As each car was driven forward, it was stripped of its burden of drums and crates.

These were stowed separately in cargo nets. Then they thrust sturdy wooden pallets under the chassis of the car and fixed the heavy hemp lines. At a signal from Papadopoulos, the men at the winches started the donkey engines and the lines ran through the blocks on the booms of the derricks.

The bulky cars rose slowly and then swung inboard.

The whole operation was carried out swiftly, with no raised voices or unnecessary noise. Only a muttered command, the grunt of straining men, the muted clatter of the donkey engines and then the thump of the cars settling on the deck.

"These fellows know their business." Gareth watched approvingly, then turned to Jake. "I'll go down to the. harbour master and clear the bills of lading. We'll be ready to sail in an hour or so." He sauntered away and disappeared into the shadows.

"Let's inspect the accommodation," Jake suggested, and took Vicky's arm. "It looks like a regular Cunarder." They climbed the gangplank to the deck and only then did they get the first whiff of the slave stench. By the time Gareth returned from his nefarious negotiations with bills of lading showing a consignment of four ambulances and medical supplies to the International Red Cross Association at Alexandria, the others had made a brief examination of the single tiny odoriferous cabin which Papadopoulos had put at their disposal and decided to leave it to the cockroaches and bed bugs which were already in residence.

"It's only a few days" sailing. I think I prefer the open deck.

If it rains, we can take shelter in the cars." Jake spoke for all of them as they stood in a group at the rail, watching the lights of Dares Salaam glide away into the night, while the diesel engine of the schooner thumped under their feet and the sweet cool sea breeze washed over the deck, cleansing their nostrils and mouths of the slave stench.

Vicky was awakened by the brilliance of the starlight shining into her face and she opened her eyes and stared up at a sky that blazed with the splendours Of the universe, as fields and seas of pearly light swirled across the heavens.

Quietly she slipped out of her blankets and went to the ship's rail.

The sea was lustrous glittering sable; each wave seemed to be carved from some solid and precious metal, bejewelled by the reflections of the starlight and through it the ship's wake glowed with phosphorescence like a trail of green fire.

The sea wind was the touch of lovers" hands against her skin and in her hair, the great mainsail whispered above her head, and there was an almost physical ache in her chest at the beauty of this night.

When Gareth came up silently behind her and slipped his arms about her waist, she did not even turn her head, but lay back against him.

She did not want to argue and tease. As she herself had written, she might soon be dead and the night was too beautiful to let it pass.

Neither of them spoke, but Vicky sighed and shuddered voluptuously as she felt his hands, smooth and skilful, slide up under the light cotton blouse. His touch, like the wind, was softly caressing.

Through their thin clothing she could feel the warmth and resilience of his flesh pressed against her, feel his chest surge and subside to the urgency of his breathing.

She turned slowly within the circle of his arms and lifted her face to his as he stooped, meeting his body with a forward thrust of her hips.

The taste of his mouth and the musky male smell of his body hastened her own arousal.

It took all her determination to tear her lips loose from his, and to draw away from his embrace. She crossed quickly to where her blankets lay and picked them up with hands that shook.

She spread them again between the dark supine forms of Jake and Gregorius, and only when she rolled herself into their coarse folds and lay upon her back trying to control her ragged breathing was she aware that Jake Barton was awake.

His eyes were closed and his breathing was deep and even, but she knew with complete certainty that he was awake.

eneral Emilio De Bono stood at the window of his office and looked across the squalid roofs of the town of Asmara towards the great brooding massif of the Ethiopian highlands. It looked like the backbone of a dragon, he thought, and suppressed a shudder.

The General was seventy years of age, so he recalled vividly the last Italian army that had ventured into that mountain fastness. The name Adowa was a dark blot on the history of Italian arms, and after forty years, that terrible bloody defeat of a modern European army was still unavenged.

Now destiny had chosen him as the avenger and Emilio De Bono was not certain that the role suited him. It would be much more to his liking if wars could be fought without anybody getting hurt. The General would go to great lengths to avoid inflicting pain or even discomfort. Orders that might be distasteful. to the recipient were avoided. Operations that might place anybody in jeopardy were frowned upon severely by the commanding General and his officers had learned not to suggest such extravagances.

The General was at heart a diplomat and a politician not a warrior. He liked to see smiling faces, so he smiled a great deal himself. He resembled a sprightly, wizened little goat, with the pointed white beard that gave him the nickname of "Little Beard'. And he addressed his officers as "Caro', and his men as "Bambino'. He just wanted to be loved. So he smiled and smiled.

However, the General was not smiling now. This morning he had received from Rome another one of those importunate coded telegrams signed Benito Mussolini. The wording had been even more peremptory than usual. "The King of Italy wishes, and I, Benito Mussolini, Minister of the armed forces, order that-" Suddenly he struck himself a blow on his medal-bedecked chest which startled Captain Crespi, his aide-decamp.

"They do not understand," cried De Bono bitterly. "It is all very beautiful to sit in Rome and urge haste. To cry "Strike!" But they do not see the picture as we do, who stand here looking across the Mareb River at the swarming multitudes of the enemy." The Captain came to the General's side and he also stared out of the window. The building that housed the expeditionary army headquarters in Asmara was double storied and the General's office on the top floor commanded a sweeping view to the foot of the mountains. The Captain observed wryly that the swarming multitudes were not readily apparent. The land was a vast emptiness slumbering in the brilliant sunlight. Air reconnaissance in depth had descried no concentrations of Ethiopian troops, and reliable intelligence reported that the Emperor Baile Selassie had ordered that none of his rudimentary military units approach the border as close as fifty kilometres, to avoid giving the Italians an excuse to march.

"They do not understand that I must consolidate my position here in Eritrea. That I must have a firm base and supply train," cried De Bono pitifully. For over a year he had been consolidating his position and assembling his supplies.

The crude little harbour of Massawa, which once had lazily served the needs of an occasional tramp steamer or one of the little Japanese salt-traders, had been reconstructed completely. Magnificent stone piers ran out into the sea, great wharves bustled with steam cranes, and busy locomotives shuttled the incredible array of warlike stores that poured ashore by the thousands of tons a day for month after month. The Suez Canal remained open to the transports of the Italian adventure, and a constant stream of them poured southwards, unaffected by the embargo that the League of Nations had declared on the importation of military materials into Eastern Africa.

Up to the present time, over three million tons of stores had been landed, and this did not include the five thousand vehicles of war troop transports, armoured cars, tanks and aircraft that had come ashore. To distribute this vast assembly of vehicles and stores, a road system had been constructed fanning into the interior, a system so magnificent as to recall that of the Caesars of ancient Rome.

General De Bono smote his chest again, startling his aide. "They urge me to untimely endeavour. They do not seem to realize that my "force is insufficient." The force which the General lamented was the greatest and most powerful army ever assembled on the African continent. He commanded three hundred and sixty thousand men, armed with the most sophisticated tools of destruction the world had yet devised from the Caproni CA.133 three-engined monoplane which could carry two tons of high explosive and poison gas a range of nine hundred miles, to the most modern armoured cars and heavily armoured CV.3 tanks with their 50 men. guns, and supporting units of heavy artillery.

This great assembly was encamped about Asmara and upon the cliffs overlooking the Mareb River. It was made up of distinct elements, the green-clad regular army formations with their wide-brimmed tropical helmets, the black shirt r Fascist militia with their high boots and cross-straps, their deaths head and thunderbolt badges and their glittering daggers, the regular colonial units of black Somalis and Eritreans in their tall tasselled red fezes and baggy shirts, their gaily coloured regimental sashes and put teed legs above bare feet.

Lastly, the irregular volunteers or ban da who were a. group of desert bandits and cut-throat cattle thieves attracted by the possibility of war in the way that the taint of blood gathers sharks.

De Bono knew but did not ponder the fact that nearly seventy years previously, the British General Napier had marched on Magdala with less than fifty thousand men, meeting and defeating the entire Ethiopian army on the way, storming the mountain fortress and releasing the British prisoners held there, before retiring in good order.

Such heroics were outside the realms of the General's imagination.

"Caro."

"The General placed an arm about the gold, braided shoulders of his aide. "We must compose a reply to the Duce. He must be made to realize my difficulties." He patted the shoulder affectionately and his face lightened once more into its habitual expression as he began composing.

"My dear and respected leader, please be assured of my loyalty to you and to the glorious fatherland of Italy." The Captain hastened to take up a message pad and scribble industriously. "Be assured also that I never cease to toil by night and by day towards--" It took almost two hours of creative effort before the General was satisfied with his flowery and rambling refusal to carry out his orders.

"Now," he ceased his pacing and smiled tenderly at the Captain, "although we are not yet ready for an advance in force, it will serve to placate Il Duce if we initiate the opening phases of the southern offensive."

The General's plans for the invasion, when it was finally put in hand, had been laid with as ponderous regard to detail as his earlier preparations. Historical necessity dictated that the main attack should be centred on Adowa.

Already a marble monument, brought from Italy and engraved with the words "The dead of Adowa avenged with the date left open, lay amongst the huge mountains of his stores.

ndary flanking attack However, the plan called for a secc, farther south through one of the very few gateways to the central highlands, This was the Sardi Gorge. A narrow opening that was riven up from the desert floor, splitting like an axe-stroke the precipitous mountain ranges, and forming a pass through which an army might reach the plateau that reared seven thousand feet above the desert.

The first phase of this plan entailed the seizure of the approaches to the Sardi Gorge and particularly important 1: in this dry and scalded desert would be the water supplies of the attacking army.

The General crossed the floor to the large-scale map, of Eastern Africa which covered one wall, and he picked up the ivory pointer to touch an isolated spot in the emptiness below the mountains.

"The Wells of Chaldi, he read the name aloud. "Whom shall we send?"

The Captain looked up from his pad, and observed how the spot was surrounded by the forbidding yellow of the desert.

He had been in Africa long enough to know what that meant, and there was only one person who he would wish were there.

"Belli," he said.

"Ah," said the General. "Count Aldo Belli the fire eater "The clown, "said the Captain.

"Come, caro," the General admonished his aide mildly.

"You are too harsh. The Count is a distinguished diplomat, he was for three years ambassador to the court of St. James in London. His family is old and noble and very very rich."

"He is a blow-hard," said the Captain stubbornly, and the General sighed.

"He is a personal friend of Benito Mussolini. II Duce is a constant guest at his castle. He has great political power-" "He would be well out of harm's way at this desolate spot," said the Captain, and the General sighed again.

"Perhaps you are correct, caro. Send for the good Count if you please." Captain Crespi stood on the steps of the headquarters building, beneath the portico with its imitation marble columns and the clumsily painted fresco depicting a heroic band of heavily muscled Italians defeating heathens, ploughing the earth, harvesting the corn, and generally building an empire.

The Captain watched sourly as the huge Rolls-Royce open tourer bumped down the dusty, pot-holed main street.

Its headlights glared like monstrously startled eyes, and its burnished sky-blue paintwork was dulled by a light flouring of pale dust. The purchase price of this vehicle would have consumed five years of his service pay, which accounted for much of the Captain's sourness.

Count Aldo Belli, as one of the nation's great landowners and amongst the five most wealthy men in Italy, did not rely on the army for his transportation. The Rolls had been adapted and designed to his personal specifications by the makers.

As it slid to a graceful halt beneath the portico, the k Captain noticed the Count's personal arms blazoned on the front door. - a rampant golden wolf supporting a shield with a quartered device of scarlet and silver. The legend unfurled beneath it read, "Courage arms me." As the car stopped, a small wiry sun-blackened little man in the uniform of a black shirt sergeant leaped from the seat be-side the driver and dropped on one knee in the roadway with a bulky camera at the ready to capture the moment when the figure in the wide rear seat of the Rolls should descend.

Count Aldo Belli adjusted his black beret carefully, sucked in his belly and rose to his feet as the driver scurried around to hold open the door. The Count smiled. It was a smile of flashing white teeth and powerful charisma. His eyes were dark and romantic with the sweeping lashes of a lady of fashion, his skin was lightly tanned to a golden olive and the lustrous curls of his hair that escaped from under the black beret shone in the sunlight. Although he was almost thirty-five years of age, not a single grey strand adulterated that splendid mane.

From his commanding position his height was exaggerated, so he seemed to tower god-like above the men who scampered about him. The highly polished cross-straps glittered across his chest as did the silver deaths head cap badges. The short regimental dagger on his hip set with small diamonds and seed pearls was to the Count's own design, and the ivory-handled revolver had been hand-made for him by Beretta; the holster was belted in tightly to subdue a waistline that was showing signs of rebellion.

The Count paused and glanced down at the little sergeant.

"Yes, Gino?"he asked.

"Good, my Count. just a little up with the chin." The Count's chin caused them both much concern. At certain angles, it showed an alarming tendency to duplicate itself like the ripples on a pond. The Count threw up his chin sternly, rather like 11 Duce, and the gesture ironed out the jowls below.

"Bellissimo," cried Gino, and tripped the shutter. The Count stepped down from the Rolls, enjoying the way the soft sparkling leather of his high boots gave like the bellows of a concertina above his instep as he moved, and he hooked the thumb of his gloved left hand into the belt above his dagger as he flung his right arm up and outwards in the Fascist salute.

"The General awaits you, Colonel,"Crespi greeted him.

"I came the moment I received the summons." The Captain made a move.

He knew the summons had been delivered at ten o'clock that morning and it was now almost three in the afternoon. The Count's primping had taken most of the day, and now he glowed from bathing and shaving and massaging and smelled like a rose garden in full bloom.

"Clown," thought the Captain again. It had taken Crespi ten years of unswerving service and dedication to reach his rank, while this man had opened his purse, invited Mussolini for a week of hunting and carousal to his estates at the foot of the Apennines, and had in return been given the colonelcy of a full battalion. The man had never fired a shot at anything larger than a boar, and until six months ago had commanded nothing more formidable than a squad of accountants, a troop of gardeners or a platoon of strumpets to his bed.

"Clown," thought the Captain bitterly, bowing over the hand and grinning ingratiatingly. "Have your photograph taken swatting flies in the Danakil desert, or sniffing camel dung beside the Wells of Chaldi," he thought, and backed away through the wide doors into the relative cool of the administrative building. "This way, Colonel, if you would be so kind." A General De Bono lowered the binoculars through which with brooding disquiet he had been studying the Ethiopian massif, and almost with relief turned to greet the Colonel.

"Caro," smiled the General, extending both hands as he crossed the uncarpeted hand-painted tiles. "My dear Count, it is so good of you to come." The Count drew himself up at the threshold and flung the Fascist salute at the advancing General, stopping him in confusion.

"In the services of my country and my king, I would count no sacrifice too dear." Aldo Belli was stirred by his own words. He must remember them. They could be used again.

"Yes, of course," De Bono agreed hurriedly. "I'm sure we all feel that way."

"General De Bono, you have only to command me."

"Thank you, caro mio. But a glass of Madeira and a biscuit first?"

suggested the General. A little sweetmeat to take away the taste of the medicine.

The General felt very bad about sending anyone down into the Danakil country it was hot here in Asmara, God alone knew what it would be like down there, and the General felt a pang of dismay that he had allowed Crespi to select anyone with such political influence as the Count. He would not further insult the good Count by too hurriedly coming to the business in hand.

"I hoped that you might have had an opportunity to hear the new production of La Traviata before leaving Rome?"

"Indeed, General. I was fortunate enough to be included in the Duce's party for the opening night." The Count relaxed a little, smiling that flashing smile.

The General sighed as he poured the wine. "Ha! The civilized life, so far a cry from this land of thorns and savages .

It was late afternoon before the General had steeled himself to approach the painful subject of the interview and, smiling apologetically, he gave his orders.

"The Wells of Chaldi," repeated the Count, and immediately a change came over him. He leapt to his feet, knocking over the Madeira glass, and strode majestically back and forth, his heels cracking on the tiles, belly sucked in and noble chin on high.

"Death before dishonour," cried Aldo Belli, the Madeira warming his ardour.

"I hope not, caro," murmured the General. "All I want you to do is take up a guard position on an untenanted water-hole." But the Count seemed not to hear him. His eyes were dark and glowing.

"I am greatly indebted to you for this opportunity to distinguish my command. You can count on me to the death." The Count stopped short as a fresh thought occurred to him. "You will support my advance with armour and aircraft? "he asked anxiously.

"I don't really think that will be necessary, caro." The General spoke mildly. All this talk of death and honour troubled him, but he did not want to give offence. "I don't think you will meet any resistance."

"But if I do?" the Count demanded with mounting agitation, so that the General went to stroke his arm placatingly.

"You have a radio, caro. Call on me for any assistance you need The Count thought about that for a moment and clearly found it acceptable. Once more the patriotic fervour returned to the glowing eyes.

"Ours is the victory," he cried, and the General echoed him vigorously.

"I hope so, caro. Indeed I hope so." Suddenly the Count swirled and strode to the door. He flung it open and called.

"Gino!" The little black-shirted sergeant hurried into the room, frantically adjusting the huge camera that hung about his neck.

"The General does not mind?" asked Aldo Belli leading him to the window. "The light is better here." The slanting rays of the dying sun poured in to light the two men theatrically as the Count seized De Bono's hand.

"Closer together, please. Back a trifle, General, you are covering the Count. That's excellent. Chin up a little, my Count.

Ha! Bello!" cried Gino, and recorded faithfully the startled expression above the General's little white goatee.

The senior major of the Blackshirt "Africa" Battalion was a hard professional soldier of thirty years" experience, a veteran of Vittorio Veneto and Caporetto, where he had been commissioned in the field.

He was a fighting man and he reacted with disgust to his posting from his prestigious regiment in the regular army to this rabble of political militia. He had protested at length and with all the power at his command, but the order came from on high, from divisional headquarters itself. The divisional General was a friend of Count Aldo Belli, and He also knew the Count intimately and owed favours decided that he needed a real soldier to guide and counsel him. Major Castelani was probably one of the most real soldiers in the entire army of Italy. Once he realized that his posting was inevitable, he had resigned himself and settled to his new duties whipping and bullying his new command into order.

He was a big man with a close-cropped skull of grey bristle, and a hound-dog, heavily lined face burned and eroded by the weathering of a dozen campaigns. He walked with the rolling gait of a sailor or a horseman, though he was neither, and his voice could carry a mile into a moderate wind.

Almost entirely due to his single-handed efforts, the battalion was drawn up in marching order an hour before dawn. Six hundred and ninety men with their motorized transports strung out down the main street of Asmara. The lorries were crammed with silent men huddling in their greatcoats against the mild morning chill. The motorcycle outriders were sitting astride their machines flanking the newly polished but passenger-less Rolls-Royce command car, with its gay pennants and its driver sitting lugubriously at the wheel. A charged sense of apprehension and uncertainty gripped the entire assembly of warriors.

There had been wild rumours flying about the battalion for the last twelve hours they had been selected for some desperate and dangerous mission. The previous evening the mess sergeant had actually witnessed the Colonel Count Aldo Belli weeping with emotion as he toasted his junior officers with the fighting slogan of the regiment, "Death before dishonour," which might sound fine on a bellyful of chianti, but left a hollow feeling at five in the morning on top of a breakfast of black bread and weak coffee.

The Third Battalion was in a collectively sombre mood as the sun came up in a blaze of hot scarlet, forcing them almost immediately to discard the greatcoats. The sun climbed into a sky of burning blue and the men waited as patiently as oxen in the traces. Someone once observed that war is ninety-nine per cent boredom and one per cent unmitigated terror. The Third Battalion was learning the ninety-nine per cent.

Major Luigi Castelani sent yet another messenger to the Colonel's quarters a little before noon, and this time received a reply that the Count was now actually out of bed and had almost completed his toilet.

He would join the battalion shortly. The Major swore with the practice of an old campaigner and set off with his rolling swagger down the column to quell the mutinous mutterings from the half mile-long column of canvas-covered lorries sweltering in the midday sun.

The Count came like the rising sun itself, glowing and glorious, flanked by two captains and preceded by a trooper carrying the battle standard which the Count had personally designed. It was based on the eagles of a Roman legion, complete with shrieking birds of prey and dangling silken tassels.

The Count floated on a cloud of bonhomie and expensive eau de cologne.

Gino got a few good shots of him embracing his junior officers, and slapping the backs of the senior NCOs. At the common soldiers he smiled like a father and spurred their spleens with a few apt homilies on duty and sacrifice as he strode down the column.

"What a fine body of warriors," he told the Major. "I am moved to song." Luigi Castelani winced. The Colonel was frequently moved to song. He had taken lessons with the most famous teachers in Italy and as a younger man he had seriously considered a career in opera.

Now he halted and spread his arms, threw back his head and let the song flow in a deep ringing baritone. Dutifully, his officers joined in the stirring chorus of "La Giovinezza', the Fascist marching song.

The Colonel moved slowly back along the patient column in the sunlight, pausing to strike a pose as he went for a high note, lifting his right hand with the tip of the second finger lightly touching the thumb, while the other hand grasped the beiewelled dagger at his waist.

The song ended and the Colonel cried, "Enough! It is time to march where are the maps?" and one of his subalterns hurried forward with the map case.

"Colonel, sir," Luigi Castelani intervened tactfully. "The road is well sign-posted, and I have two native guides-" The Count ignored him and watched while the maps were spread on the glistening bonnet of the Rolls.

"Ah!" He studied the maps learnedly, then looked up at his two captains. "One of you on each side of me," he instructed. "Major Vita you here! A stern expression, if you please, and do not look at the camera." He pointed with a lordly gesture at Johannesburg four thousand miles to the south and held the pose long enough for Gino to record it. Next, he climbed into the rear seat of the Rolls and, standing, he pointed imperatively ahead along the road to the Danakil desert.

Mistakenly, Luigi Castelani took this as a command to advance. He let out a series of bull-like bellows and the battalion was galvanized into frantic action. Like one man, they scrambled into the covered lorries and took their seats on the long benches, each in full matching order with a hundred rounds of ammunition in his bandolier and a rifle between his knees.

However, by the time 690 men were embarked, the Colonel had once more descended from the Rolls. It was an unfortunate chance that dictated that the Rolls should be parked directly in front of the casino.

The casino was a government-licensed institution under whose auspices young ladies were brought out from Italy on six-month contracts to cater to the carnal needs of tens of thousands of lusty young men in a woman less environment.

Very few of these ladies had the stamina to sign a renewal of the contract and none of them found it necessary.

Possessed of a substantial dowry, they returned home to find a husband.

The casino had a silver roof of galvanized corrugated iron Hill and its eaves and balconies were decorated with intricate cast-iron work. The windows of the girls" rooms opened on to the street.

The young hostesses, who usually rose in the mid afternoon, had been prematurely awakened by the bellowing of orders and the clash of weapons. They had traipsed out on to the long second-floor veranda, clad in brightly coloured but flimsy nightwear, and now entered into the spirit of the occasion, giggling and blowing kisses to the officers. One of them had a bottle of iced Lacrima Cristi, which she knew from experience was the Colonel's favourite beverage, and she beckoned with the cold de wed bottle.

The Colonel realized suddenly that the singing and excitement had made him thirsty and peckish.

"A cup for the stirrup, as the English say," he suggested jocularly, and slapped one of the captains on the shoulder.

Most of his staff followed him with alacrity into the casino.

A little after five o'clock, one of the junior subalterns emerged, slightly inebriated, from the casino with a message from the Colonel to the Major.

"At dawn tomorrow, we advance without fail." The battalion rumbled out of Asmara the following morning at ten o'clock. The Colonel was feeling liverish and disgruntled. The previous night's excitement had got out of hand, he had sung until his throat was hoarse and had drunk great quantities of Lacrima Cristi, before going upstairs with two of the young hostesses.

Gino knelt on the seat of the Rolls beside him, holding an umbrella over his head, and the driver tried to avoid potholes and irregularities in the road. But the Count was pale and his brow sparkled with the sweat of nausea.

Sergeant Gino wished to cheer him. He hated to see his Count in misery and so he attempted to rekindle the warlike spirit of yesterday.

"Think on it, my Count. We of the entire army of Italy will be the very first to confront the enemy. The first to meet the blood-thirsty barbarian with his cruel heart and red hands." The Count thought on it as he was bidden. He thought on it with great concentration and increasing nausea.

Suddenly he became aware that of all the 360,000 men that comprised the expeditionary forces of Italy, he, Aldo Belli, was the very first, the veritable point of the spear aimed at Ethiopia. He remembered suddenly the horror stories he had heard from the disaster of Adowa. One of the atrocity stories outweighed all others the Ethiopians castrated their prisoners. He felt the contents of that noble sac between his thighs retracting forcibly and a fresh sweat broke out upon his brow.

Stop!" he shrieked at the driver. "Stop, this instant."

A bare two miles from the centre of the town, the column was plunged into confusion by the abrupt halt of the lead vehicle, and, answering the loud and urgent shouts of the commanding officer, the Major hurried forward to learn that the order of march had been altered. The command car would take up station in the exact centre of the column with six motorcycle outriders brought back to ride as flank guards.

It was another hour before the new arrangement could be put into effect and once more the column headed south and west into the great empty land with its distant smoky horizons and its vast vaulted blue dome of the burning heavens.

Count Aldo Belli rode easier on the luxurious leather of the Rolls, cheered by the knowledge that preceding him were three hundred and forty-five fine rubbery sets of peasant testicles upon which the barbarian could blunt his blade.

The column went into bivouac that evening fifty-three kilometres from Asmara. Not even the Count could pretend that this was a forced march for motorized infantry but the advantage was that a pair of motorcyclists could send back with a despatch for General De Bono reassuring him of the patriotism, the loyalty and the fighting ardour of the Third Battalion and, of course, on their return the cyclists could carry blocks of ice from the casino packed in salt and straw and stowed in the sidecars.

The following morning, the Count had recovered much of his good cheer.

He rose early at nine " O clock and took a hearty alfresco breakfast with his officers under the shade of a spread tarpaulin and then, from the rear seat of the Rolls, he gave a clenched fist cavalry order to advance.

Still in the centre of the column, pennants fluttering and battle standard glittering, the Rolls glided forward and it looked, even to the disillusioned Major, as if they might make good going of the day's march.

The undulating grassland fell away almost imperceptibly beneath the speeding wheels, and the blue loom of the mountains on their right hand merged gradually with the lighter fiercer blue of the sky. The transition to desert country was so gradual as to lull the unobservant traveller.

The intervals between the flat-topped acacia trees became greater and the trees themselves were more stunted, more twisted and spiky, as they progressed, until at last they ceased and the bushes of spino Cristi replaced them grey and low and viciously thor ned The earth was parched and crumbled, dotted with clumps of camel grass and the horizon was unbroken, enclosing them entirely. The land itself was so flat and featureless that it gave the illusion of being saucer-shaped, as though the rim of the land rose slightly to meet the sky.

Through this wilderness, the road was slashed like the claw mark of a predator into the fleshy red soil. The tracks were so deeply rutted that the middle hump constantly brushed the chassis of the Rolls, and a mist of fine red dust stood in the heated air long after the column had passed.

The Colonel was bored and uncomfortable. It was becoming increasingly clear, even to the Count, that the wilderness harboured no hostile horde, and his courage and impatience returned.

"Drive to the head of the column," he instructed Giuseppe, and the Rolls pulled out and sped past the leading trucks, the Count bestowing a cheery salute on Castelani as he left him glowering and muttering behind him.

When Castelani caught up with him again, two hours later, the Count was standing on the burnished bonnet of the Rolls staring through his binoculars at the horizon and doing an excited little dance while he urged Gino to make haste in unpacking the special Mantilicher 9.3

men sporting rifle from its leather case. The weapon was of seasoned walnut, butt and stock, and the blued steel was inlaid with twenty-four-carat gold hunting scenes of the chase boar and stag, huntsmen on horseback and hounds in full cry. It was a masterpiece of the gunsmith's art.

Without lowering the binoculars, he gave orders to Castelani to erect the radio aerial and send a message of good cheer and enthusiasm to General De Bono, to report the magnificent progress made by the battalion to date and assure him that they would soon command all the approaches to the Sardi Gorge. The Major should also put the column into laager and set up the ice machine while the Colonel undertook a reconnaissance patrol in the direction in which he was now staring so intently.

The group of big dun-coloured animals he was watching were a mile off and moving steadily away into the mirage-fevered distance, but their gracefully straight horns showed dark and lo the against the distant sky.

Gino had the loaded Mannlicher in the rear seat and the Count jumped down into the passenger seat beside the driver. Standing holding the windshield with one hand, he gave his officers the Fascist salute, and the Rolls roared forward, left the road and careered away, weaving amongst the thorn scrub and bounding over the rough ground in pursuit of the distant herd.

The beisa oryx is a large and beautiful desert antelope.

There were eight of them in the herd and with their sharp eyesight they were in flight before the Rolls had approached within three-quarters of a mile.

They ran lightly over the rough ground, their pale beige hides blending cunningly with the soft colours of the desert, but the long wicked black horns rode proudly as any battle standard.

The Rolls gained steadily on the running herd, with the Count hysterically urging his driver to greater speed, ignoring the thorn branches that scored the flawless sides of the big blue machine as it passed. Hunting was one of the Count's many pleasures. Boar and stag were specially bred on his estates, but this was the first large game he had encountered since his arrival in Africa. The herd was strung out, two old bulls leading, plunging ahead with a light rocking-horse gait, while the cows and two younger males trailed them.

The bouncing, roaring machine drew level with the last animal and ran alongside at a range of twenty yards. The galloping oryx did not turn its head but ran on doggedly after its stronger companions.

"Halt," shrieked the Count, and the driver stood on his brakes, the car broadsiding to rest in a billowing cloud of dust. The Count tumbled out of the open door and threw up the Mannlicher. The barrel kicked up and the shots crashed out. The first was a touch high and it threw a puff of dust off the earth far beyond the running animal the second slapped into the pale fur in front of the shoulder and the young oryx somersaulted over its broken neck and went down in a clumsy tangle of limbs.

"Onwards!" shouted the Count, leaping aboard the Rolls as it roared away once again. The herd was already far ahead but inexorably the Rolls closed the gap and at last drew level. Again the ringing crack of rifle-fire and the sliding, tumbling fall of a heavy pale body.

Like a paper chase, they left the wasteland littered with the pale bodies until only one old bull ran on alone. And he was cunning, swinging away westward into the broken ground for which he clearly headed at the outset of the chase.

It was hours and many miles later when the Count lost all patience. On the lip of another wadi he stopped the Rolls and ordered Gino, protesting volubly, to stand at attention and offer his shoulder as a dead-rest for the Marmlicher.

The beisa had slowed now to an exhausted trot, but the range was six hundred yards as the Count sighted across the intervening scrub and through heat-dancing air that swirled like gelatinous liquid.

The rifle-fire cracked the desert silences and the antelope kept trotting steadily away, while the Count shrieked abuse at it and crammed a fresh load of brass cartridges into the magazine.

The animal was almost beyond effective range now, but the next bullet fired with the rear sight at maximum elevation fell in a long arcing trajectory and they heard the thump of the strike, long after the beisa had collapsed abruptly and disappeared below the line of grey scrub.

When they had found another crossing and forced the

, Rolls through the deep ravine, scraping the rear fender and denting one of the big silver wheel-hubs, they came up to the spot where the antelope lay on its side. Leaving the rifle on the back seat in his eagerness, the Count leapt out before the Rolls had stopped completely.

-Get one of me completing the coup de grace," he shouted at Gino, as he unholstered the ivory-handled Beretta and ran to the downed animal.

The soft bullet had shattered the spinal column a few inches forward of the pelvis, paralysing the hindquarters, and the blood pumped gently from the wound in a bright rivulet down the pale beige flank.

The Count posed dramatically, pointing the pistol at the magnificently horned head with its elaborate face-mask of dark chocolate stripes.

Near by, Gino knelt in the soft earth focusing the camera.

At the critical moment, the antelope heaved itself up into a sitting position and stared with swimming agonized eyes into the Count's face. The beisa is one of the most aggressive antelopes in Africa, capable of killing even a fully grown lion with its long rapier horns. This old bull weighed 450 lb. and stood four feet high at the shoulder while the horns rose another three feet above that.

The beisa snorted, and the Count forgot all about the levelled pistol in his hand in his sudden desperate desire to reach the safety of the Rolls.

Leading the beisa by six inches, he vaulted lightly into the back seat and crouched on the floorboards, covering his head with both arms while the beisa battered the sides of the Rolls, driving in one door and ripping the paintwork with the deadly horns.

Gino was trying to disappear into the earth by sheer pressure, and he was making a pitiful wailing sound. The driver had stalled the engine, and he sat frozen in his seat and every time the beisa crashed into the Rolls, he was thrown so violently forward that his forehead struck the windshield, and he pleaded, "Shoot it, my Count. Please, my Count, shoot the monster." The Count's posterior was pointed to the sky. It was the only part of his anatomy that was visible above the rear seat of the Rolls and he was shrieking for somebody to hand him the rifle, but not raising his head to search for it.

The bullet that had severed the beisa's spine had angled forward and pierced the lung as well. The violent exertions of the stricken animal tore open a large artery and, with a pitiful bellow and a sudden double spurt of blood through the nostrils, it collapsed.

In the long silence that followed, the Count's pale face rose slowly above the level of the back door and he stared fearfully at the carcass. Its stillness reassured him. Cautiously, he groped for the Marinlicher, lifted it slowly and poured a stream of bullets into the inert beisa. His hands were shaking so violently that some of the shots missed the body and came perilously close to where Gino still lay, producing a fresh outburst of wails and more mole-like efforts to become subterranean.

Satisfied that the beisa was at last dead, the Count descended and walked slowly towards a nearby clump of thorn scrub, but his gait was bow-legged and stiff, for he had lightly soiled his magnificently monogrammed silk underwear.

In the cool of the evening, the slightly crumpled Rolls returned to the battalion bivouac. Draped over the bonnet and across the wide mudguards lay the bleeding carcasses of the antelopes. The Count stood to acknowledge the cheers of his troops, a veritable triumphant Nimrod.

A radio message from General De Bono awaited him. It was not a reprimand, the General would not go that far, but it pointed out that although the General was grateful for the Count's efforts up to the present time, and for his fine sentiments and loyal messages, nevertheless the General would be very grateful if the Count could find some way in which to speed up his advance.

The Count sent him a five-hundred-word reply ending, "Ours is the Victory," and then went to feast on barbecued antelope livers and iced chianti with his officers.

Leaving the sailing and handling of the HirondeUe to his Mohammedan mate and his raggedy crew, Captain Papadopoulos had spent the preceding five days sitting at the table in his low-roofed poop cabin playing two-handed gin rummy with Major Gareth Swales. Gareth had suggested the diversion and it had occurred to the Captain by this time that there was something unnatural in the consistent run of winning cards which had distinguished Gareth's play.

The agreed fare for transporting the cars and the four passengers had totalled two hundred and fifty of sterling.

The Captain's losses had just exceeded that figure, and Gareth smiled winningly at Papadopoulos and smoothed the golden moustaches.

"What do you say we give it a break now, Papa old sport, go up on deck and stretch the legs, what?" Having recovered the passage money, Gareth had accomplished the task he had set himself, and he was now anxious to return to the open deck where Vicky Camberwell and Jake were becoming much too friendly for his peace of mind.

Every time Gareth had been forced by nature to make a brief journey to the poop rail, he had seen the two of them together and they seemed to be laughing a great deal, which was always a bad sign. Vicky was in the forefront of any action, passing tools to Jake and offering general encouragement, as he worked at fine-tuning the cars and making last minute preparations for the desert crossing or the two of them sat with Gregorius while amidst great hilarity he gave them basic lessons in the Amharic language. He wondered distractedly what else they were up to.

However, Gareth was a man sure of his priorities and his first concern was to recover his money from Papadopoulos.

Having done so, he could now return to sheep-dogging Vicky Camberwell.

"It's been a lot of fun, Papa." He half rose from the table, folding the grimy wad of banknotes into his back pocket and gathering the pile of coins with his free hand.

Captain Papadopoulos reached into the depths of the Arabic gown he wore and produced a knife with an ornately carved handle and a viciously curved blade. He balanced it lightly in the palm of his hand and his single eye glittered coldly at Gareth.

"Deal!" he said, and Gareth smiled blandly and sank back into his seat. He picked up the cards and cut them with a ripping sound and the knife disappeared into Papadopoulos's gown once more as he watched the shuffle intently.

"Actually, I do feel like a few more hands," Gareth murmured.

"Just getting warmed up, hey?" The slaver altered course as she cleared the tip of the great horn of Africa and rounded Cape Guardafui.

Before her lay the long gut of the Gulf of Aden and a run of five hundred miles westwards to French Somaliland.

The Hindu mate came down and whispered fearfully to his Captain.

"What troubles the fellow?" Gareth asked.

"He worries about the English blockade."

"A "So do I" Gareth answered. "Shouldn't we go up on deck? Deal,"said Papadopoulos.

Below them they heard the steady thumping beat of the big diesel engine begin, and the vibration of the propeller shaft spinning in its bed.

The mate had her under sail and power now, and the motion of the ship changed immediately, the thrust of the propeller combining with the push of the full spread of her canvas, and she flew towards the vivid purple and pink flush of sky and piled cumulus cloud behind which the sun was beginning to set.

The mate had set a course which would take him swiftly down the middle of the Gulf, out of sight of Africa on his port side and Arabia on the starboard. The HirondeUe was making twenty-five knots, for the sea breeze was on her best point of sailing and a day and two nights would see them in and out again. He sent one of his best men -to the masthead with a telescope and he wondered which the English viewed more sternly young black girls in chains or Vickers machine guns in wooden cases. Mournfully he concluded that either of them would be lethal and he shrilled at his masthead to keep a strict watch.

The sun was sinking with agonizing slowness, almost dead ahead and the wind rose steadily, driving the Hirondelle on deeper into the gut.

Jake Barton wriggled out of the engine hatch of Miss Wobbly and grinned at Vicky Camberwell who sat on the sponson above him swinging her long legs idly, with the wind in her hair and the tan she had picked up in the last few days gilding her arms and flushing at her cheeks. She had lost the dark rings of worry and the paleness of fatigue, and looked now like a schoolgirl, young and carefree and gay.

"That's the best I can do," said Jake, beginning to scour the black grease from his arms with Scrubbs Ammonia.

"She's running so sweetly, I could take her out at Le Mans." Her knees were at the level of Jake's eyes and her skirts had tucked up high. He felt his heart stop as he glanced down the smooth length of her thigh.

Her skin had a lustre and sheen, as though made of some precious and rare substance.

Vicky saw the direction of his gaze and brought her knees together sharply, although a smile touched her lips. She jumped down lightly on to the deck, steadying herself against the Hirondelle's rolling action with a touch on the muscled hardness of his arm. Vicky thoroughly enjoyed the admiration of an attractive male and Gareth had been closeted in the Captain's cabin these last five days. She smiled up at Jake. He was tall but the bush of dark hair that curled around his ears gave him the look of a small boy which was again quickly dispelled by the strong jaw line and the fine networks of creases that radiated from the outer corners of his eyes.

She realized suddenly that he was on the point of stooping to kiss her, and she felt a delicious indecision the slightest encouragement would set Jake on a violent collision course with Gareth and might seriously endanger the whole expedition and the story she wanted so badly. At that moment she noticed, as if for the first time, that Jake's mouth was wide and rutI and his lips were delicately shaped for the bigness and hairiness of him. His chin and cheeks were blued with a day's growth of beard and she knew it would feel rough and electric against her own peach-smooth cheeks. Suddenly she wanted to feel that, and she lifted her chin slightly and knew that he would read that want in the sparkle of her eyes.

The masthead shrieked like a startled gull and instantly the Hirondelle was plunged into frantic activity. The Mohammedan mate echoed his shrieks, but at a higher volume, and his grubby robes flapped around him in the wind. His eyes rolled in his dark brown skull and his toothless moutth opened so wide that Jake could see the little pink glottis dangling in the back of his throat.

"What is it? "Vicky demanded, her hand still on Jake's arm.

"Trouble," he answered grimly, and they turned as the door of the poop cabin flew open and Papadopoulos rushed out with his queue twitching like the tail of a lioness and his single eye blinking rapidly. He still clutched a fan of cards in his right hand.

"One more card and I make gin!" he howled bitterly, and threw the cards into the wind and grabbed the mate by the front of his gown, shouting into his open but now silent mouth.

The mate pointed aloft and Papadopoulos dropped him and hailed the masthead in Arabic, and Jake listened to the swift exchange.

"A British destroyer sounds like "Dauntless"," he muttered.

"You speak Arabic?" Vicky asked, and Jake stilled the question irritably and listened again.

"The destroyer has seen us. She's altering course to intercept."

Jake looked quickly at the smouldering globe of the sun, the crinkles around his eyes puckering up thoughtfully as he listened to the heated argument in Arabic taking place on the poop deck.

"Are you two having fun?" Gareth Swales asked, smiling but with a glitter in his eyes as he glanced significantly at Vicky's hand still on Jake's arm. He had come out of the cabin as silently as a panther.

Vicky dropped her hand guiltily and immediately wished she had not. She owed Gareth Swales no debts and she answered his stare defiantly, before turning back to Jake and finding him gone.

"What is it, Papa?" Gareth called up at the poop-deck, and the Captain snarled, "Your Royal mucking Navy that's what it is." And he shook his fist at the northern horizon. "The Dauntless she based at Aden, blockade for slavers."

"Where is she?" Gareth's expression changed swiftly and he strode to the rail.

"She's coming fast masthead watching her. She'll be over the horizon pretty damn quick." Papadopoulos turned from Gareth and roared a series of orders at his crew.

Immediately they swarmed down on to the main deck and gathered about the first car it was Priscilla the Pig swaying gently on her suspension as the schooner plunged ahead.

"I say," Gareth exclaimed. "What are you up to?"

"They catch me with arms aboard, big trouble," Papadopoulos explained.

"No arms, no trouble," and he watched his men fall on the lines that secured the big white-painted vehicle. "We do same trick with slaves, they go down pretty damn fast with the chains."

"Now, just hold on a shake. I paid you a fortune to transport this cargo."

"Where that fortune now, Major?" Papadopoulos shouted down at him derisively. "I got nothing in my pants how about you?" and the Captain turned away to urge his men on.

The turret of Priscilla the Pig opened suddenly and from it emerged the head and shoulders of Jake Barton with his hair blowing in the wind and a Vickers machine gun in his arms. He braced himself in the turret with the thick water jacketed barrel of the Vickers across the crook of his left arm, and the pistol grip firmly enclosed in his other hand.

Across his shoulder was draped a heavy necklace of belted ammunition.

He fired a roaring clattering burst, the tracer streaking in fiery white balls of flame a mere twelve inches over the Captain's head.

The Greek threw himself flat on his deck, howling with terror, and his crew scattered like a flock of startled hens, while Jake looked down on them benignly from his post in the turret.

"I think we should understand each other, Captain.

Nobody is going to touch these machines. The only way you are going to save your ship is by out sailing the Englishman, Jake called mildly.

"She can make thirty knots," protested the Captain, still face down on the deck.

"The longer you talk the less time you have," Jake told him.

"It'll be dark in twenty minutes. Turn away, and make a stern chase of it until it is dark Papadopoulos rose uncertainly to his feet, and stood blinking his one eye rapidly and miserably wringing his hands.

"Kindly move your arse," said Jake affably, and fired another burst of machine-gun bullets over his head.

The Captain dropped once again to the deck, howling the orders to bring the HirondelLe around on a course directly away from the closing British warship.

As the schooner came around on to her new course, Jake called Gareth across to him, and handed him the machine gun. "I want this bunch of bastards covered while I work with the Greek. You, Vicky and Greg can batten down the hatches on the cars in the meantime."

"Where did you get that gun?" Gareth asked. "I thought they were all cased."

"I like to keep a little insurance at all times, "Jake grinned, and Gareth selected two cheroots from his case, lit them both, and passed one up to Jake.

"Compliments of the management" he said. "I'm beginning to know why I picked you as a partner." Jake stuck the cheroot in the side of his mouth, exhaled a long blue feather of smoke and grinned jauntily.

"If you've got any pull with your Royal Navy, lad, then get ready to use it." Jake stood in the deep canvas crows-nest at the cross trees of the main mast, and swayed with a gut-swooping rhythm through the arc of the swinging mast as he tried to keep the grey silhouette that closed them rapidly in the field of the telescope.

Although the warship was only ten miles off, already her shape was fading into the deepening dusk, for the sea breeze had chopped the surface to a wave-flecked immensity and the sun behind Jake was touching the watery horizon and throwing the east into mysterious blue shade.

Suddenly a bright prick of light began winking rapidly from the hazy shape of the warship , and Jake read the urgent p query.

"What ship?" and Jake grinned and tried to judge how conspicuous the schooner, with her mass of canvas, was to the destroyer, and to decide the moment when he would trade speed for invisibility.

The destroyer was signalling again.

"Heave to or I will fire upon you."

"Bloody pirates," Jake growled indignantly, and cupped his hand to bellow down at the bridge.

"Get the canvas off her." On the deck far below, he saw the Greek's face, pale in the dusk looking up at him, then heard his orders repeated and watched the motley crew climb swiftly aloft.

Jake glanced back towards the tiny dark shape of the destroyer on the limitless dark sea and saw the angry red flash of her forward gun bloom in the dark. He remembered that flash so well and his skin crawled with the insects of fear as he waited out the long seconds while the shell climbed high into the sombre sky and then fell towards the schooner.

He heard it come, passing overhead in a rising shriek, before it pitched into the sea half a mile ahead of Hirondelle.

A swift, blooming pillar of spray gleamed in the last rays of the sun like pink Carrara marble and then was blown swiftly away on the wind.

The crewmen froze in the rigging, petrified by the howling passage of the shot, and then suddenly they were galvanized into frantic babbling activity and the gleaming white canvas disappeared as swiftly as a wild goose furls its wings when it settles on the lake surface.

Jake looked back at the destroyer and searched for seconds before he found her. He wondered what they would make of the disappearance of the sails. They might believe the Hirondelle had obeyed the order to heave to, not guessing that she was under propeller power as well.

Certainly she would have disappeared from their view, her low dark hull no longer beaconed by the towering white pyramid of canvas. He waited impatiently for the last few minutes until the warship itself was no longer visible from the masthead before bellowing down to the Greek the orders that sent Hirondelle swinging away into the wind and pounding back into the head sea along her original track, side-stepping the headlong charge of the destroyer.

Jake held that course while the tropical night fell over the Gulf like a warm thick blanket, pricked only by the cold white stars. He strained his eyes into the impenetrable blackness, chilled by "the fear that the destroyer Captain might have double-guessed him and anticipated his turn. At any moment, he expected to see the towering steel hull emerge at close range from the night and flood the schooner with the brilliant white beams of her battle lights and hear the squawking peremptory challenge of her bull horn.

Then suddenly, with a violent lift of relief, he saw the cold white fingers of the lights far behind at least six miles away at the spot where the destroyer had seen him taking in sail. The Captain had bought the dummy, believing that Hirondelle had heaved to and waited for him to come up.

Jake threw back his head and laughed with relief before he caught himself and began shouting new orders down to the deck, swinging the schooner once again across the wind on the reciprocal of the warship's course, and beginning the long delicate contest of skill in which the Hirondelle ducked and weaved on to her old course, while the warship plunged blindly back and forth across the darkened Gulf, searching desperately with the mile-long beams of the battle lights for the dark and stinking hull of the slaver or switching them off and running under full power with all her ports darkened in the hope of taking HirondeUe unawares.

Once the destroyer Captain almost succeeded, but Jake caught the flashing phosphorescence of her bow-wave a mile off. Desperately he yelled at the Greek to heave to and they lay silent and unseen while the low greyhound-wasted warship slid swiftly across their bows, her engines beating like a gigantic pulse, and was swallowed once again by the night. The nervous sweat that bathed Jake's shirt dried icy cold in the night wind as he put HirondeUe cautiously on course again.

Two hours later he saw the lights of the destroyer again, a glow of white light far astern, that pulsed like summer sheet lightning as the arc lamps traversed back and forth.

Then there was only the stars and many hours later the first steely light of dawn growing steadily and expanding the circle of the dark sea around the schooner.

Chilled to the bone by the night wind and the long hours of inactivity, Jake swept the horizon back and forth as the light strengthened, and only when he knew that it was empty of any trace of the warship did he close the telescope, climb stiffly from the crows-nest and begin the long slow journey down the rigging to the deck below.

Papadopoulos greeted him like a brother, reaching up to hug him and breathe garlic in his face, and Vicky had the chop-box open and the primus stove hissing. She brought him an enamel mug of steaming black coffee and looked at him with a new respect tinged with admiration.

Gareth opened the hatch of the turret from which during the whole night he had commanded the crew with a loaded Vickers machine gun and came to fetch the other mug of coffee from Vicky and gave Jake a cheroot as they moved to the rail together.

"I keep underestimating you," he grinned, as he cupped his hands around the flaring match he offered Jake. "Just because you are big I keep thinking you are stupid."

"You'll get over it, "Jake promised him. Instinctively they both glanced across the deck at where Vicky was breaking eggs into the pan and they understood each other very clearly.

She shook them both awake a little before noon. They were sprawled on their blankets in the shade under one of the cars trying to catch up on the sleep they had missed that night. However, they followed Vicky without protest to the bows and the three of them peered ahead at the low lioncoloured coast line, upon which the surf creamed softly and over which the hard aching blue shield of the sky blazed with an intensity that hurt the eyes.

There was no clear dividing line between earth and sky.

It was blurred by the low mist of dust and heat that wavered and rippled like the yellow mane of the lion. Vicky wondered whether she had ever seen such an uninviting scene, and decided she had not. She began to compose the words with which she would describe it to her tens of thousands of readers.

Gregorius came up to join the group. He had discarded the western dress and donned instead the traditional sham ma and tight breeches.

He had become the man of Africa once again, and the smooth chocolate-brown face, with its halo of dark thick curls, was lit by the passion of the returning exile.

"You cannot see the mountains the haze is too thick," he explained.

"But sometimes in the dawn when the air is cooler-" and he stared into the west, with his longing expressed clearly in the liquid flashing eyes and upon the full sculptured lips.

The schooner crept inshore, gliding over the shallows where the water was like that of a mountain stream, so clear that they could make out every detail of the reef thirty feet down and watch the shoals of coral fish below like bejewelled clouds through the crystal waters.

Papadopoulos turned the HirondeUe to approach the shore at an oblique angle so that the details of the coast resolved themselves gradually and they saw the golden red beaches broken by headlands and points of jagged rock, and beyond it the land rose gradually, barren and awful, speckled only with the low scrubby spino Cristi and car riel grass.

For an hour they ran parallel with the shore, a thousand yards off, and the group by the rail stood and stared at it with fascination.

Only Jake had left the group and was making the preparations to begin unloading, but he also came back to the rail when abruptly a deep bay opened ahead of them.

"The Bay of Chains," said Gregorius, and it was clear how it had got its name, for, huddled under the cliffs of one headland and protected from the prevailing winds and the run of the surf by the horn of land, were the ruins of the ancient slave city of Month.

Gregorius pointed it out to them, for it did not look like a city.

It was merely an area of broken rock and stone blocks running down to the water's edge. They were close enough now to make out the roughly geometrical layout of smothered streets and roofless buildings.

Hirondeue dropped anchor and snubbed up gently. Jake finished his final preparations for unloading and crossed to where Gareth stood by the rail.

"One of us will have to swim a line ashore."

"Spin you for it," suggested Gareth, and before Jake could protest he had the coin in his hand.

"Heads!" jake looked resigned.

"Bad luck, old son. Give the sharks my love." Gareth smiled and stroked his mustache.

Jake balanced on the clumsy pontoon raft as it was lifted by the donkey engine and lowered over the side, dangling on the heavy lines. and floated alongside as It settled on to the surface un-gracefully as a pregnant hippo.

Jake grinned up at Vicky who was leaning over the rail, watching with interest.

"Unless you want to be blinded with splendour, you'd better close your eyes." For a moment she did not understand, but then as he started to strip off his shirt and unbutton his pants, she turned modestly away.

With the end of a coil of light line tied about his waist Jake plunged naked into the sea and struck out for the shore. Vicky's curiosity got the better of her at this stage, and she glanced slyly overboard. There was something so childlike and defenceless about a man with his trousers off, she thought, as she considered Jake's bobbing white buttocks. She might develop that as a theme in one of her columns, she thought, and then realized that Gareth Swales was watching her with one mockingly raised eyebrow, as he paid out the coil of line that snaked after Jake. She blushed pinkly under her tan and hurried away to make sure her typewriter and personal duffel bag were packed away into Miss Wobbly.

Jake touched bottom and waded ashore to secure the line to one of the stone blocks, and already the first car was on on its wooden blocks, and, with the winch clattering, was being lifted over the side.

With each man performing his own task skilfully, one at a time the cars were lowered on to the bobbing raft. There its wheels were hastily lashed and it was hauled carefully towards the beach by the land line.

As soon as the raft ran aground on the sloping yellow sand, Jake started the engine while Gregorius clamped the footboards into place.

Then with the engine revving noisily and the raft swaying dangerously, it rolled over the footboards and up the slope to park well above the high-water mark. Then the raft was hauled back alongside the schooner for its next load.

Although they worked as swiftly as safety would allow, the hours sped away just as swiftly, and it was late afternoon when the last load of fuel drums and wooden cases, with Vicky Camberwell sitting on top of the precarious load, made the short crossing to the beach.

Almost the instant it left the ship's side, the diesel thumped into life, the anchor chain rattled in over the bows and Papadopoulos gave the order to cast off the line of the raft.

By the time Vicky jumped down on the crunchy sand, the Hirondelle was moving steadily out between the horns of the bay, and spreading her wings of white canvas to the evening breeze. The four of them stood upon the beach in the lowering dusk and watched her go. None of them waved, and yet they all felt a loss at her going. Stinking slaver, with a crew of pirates, yet she had been their link with the outer world. HirondeUe cleared the cliffs and caught the full drive of the wind, heeled eagerly and went away, with her wake leaving a long oily slick across the surface long after she had disappeared into the Gulf.